LEAP OF FAITH

B.C.'s smoke jumpers make ultra-extreme seem mundane on the front lines of wildfires

- BRIEANNA CHARLEBOIS

Standing on the edge of an open aircraft hatch, a smoke jumper in a pale yellow suit steadies himself before rocking back then swinging out the door and vanishing as gravity takes over.

"Jumper's away," someone inside the plane yells as the video pans outside the window, where smoke billows toward the sky from a wildfire below.

The footage is from last year at the start of what would soon become the busiest smoke jumping season in the 25-year history of the program.

Smokejumpers, also known as parattack crews, are wildland firefighters who are trained to parachute from fixed-wing aircraft, called "jumpships."

The job is thrilling, and like all firefighting comes with an element of danger, said veteran B.C. smoke jumper Tom Reinboldt.

But with rigorous training, he said, the goal is to "take what seems ultra-extreme and make it seem mundane."

Once on the ground, the firefighters might battle a blaze using water from a natural source, or perform other firefighting tasks like tree felling or conducting controlled burns.

The BC Wildfire Service said there were "165 operational fire jumps in 2023, more than doubling the previous record of 82."

Reinboldt said this season is a "continuation of last year."

"It's not quite as busy as last season, but a lot of those fires burned over the winter," he said, adding that while there haven't been nearly as many "initial attack starts" as there were in 2023, crews have been seeing the same types of fire behaviour.

The BC Wildfire Service said on Wednesday that they have been rapidly deployed this week to cover a surge of newly discovered fires.