Firefighters Max Li and Owen Fortey worked in silence as they checked each other’s harnesses and flight gear, using hand taps and the thumbs up gesture to move through a safety checklist before they hopped into a helicopter parked in a clearing of the Deschutes National Forest.
After a few dry runs on the ground, the pair was ready to practice rappeling up to 250 feet down a rope to fight wildfires that are impossible to reach any other way.
“The beautiful thing about helicopters is we can get our folks next to a fire – very pinpoint accuracy, very close – so they can get on the fire quickly,” said Adam Kahler, national rappel specialist with the U.S. Forest Service.
Li and Fortey were two of the 250 U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighters from across the country who traveled to Bend last week to attend the annual national rappel re-certification for the U.S. Forest Service Helicopter Rappel Program. It’s the main training for returning rappeller crewmembers this year and a requirement of the job. The training returned to Bend for the third year in a row.
A critical resource
The highly skilled wildland firefighters are likely to be in great demand this year as a concerning fire season draws near.
With little snow and rain to speak of this winter, forecasters predict above normal activity for the looming fire season. State, regional and local governments in the Pacific Northwest have already taken preventative measures to address the heightened risk, months ahead of mid-May, the typical start to fire season.
According to the Western Fire Chiefs Association website, fire seasons are getting longer, in part due to climate change. And last year was the busiest for U.S. Forest Service rappel crews across the country.
Technological advances have increased safety for some aspects of fighting fire, but “these jobs have to be done by people,” said Stanton Florea, public information officer with U.S. Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management.
Rappel crews are specially trained wildland firefighters who drop into active fires in hard-to-reach areas of the backcountry with all the needed gear and rations. They respond to all types of incidents but are typically deployed to small fires often started by lightning strikes, said Kahler.
About 320 people work across twelve rappel or helitack crews across the western United States. They’re located in Washington, California, Montana and Idaho. Oregon has four crews that form a diagonal line of coverage from the southwest to the northeast.
That diagonal tracks along a common storm path where “lightning bursts” are likely to occur.
“Typically here in Oregon, Rogue-Siskiyou will take lightning. In the afternoon it’ll track over the Cascades, through Central Oregon and then pass over the Snake River in northeast Oregon–all in one day,” Kahler said.
The rappel crews could be more critical than ever this summer.
Snow cover across the state was a mere 13% of the average in March, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center with the University of Colorado Boulder.
By June, the National Weather Service models predict risk will rise “above normal for significant wildland fire potential,” said Marc Russell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
That includes all areas of Oregon and Washington east of the Cascade Mountain range crest, he said.
Training to deploy
After a morning of land-based practice, crews sat and rested in the shade. It was a welcome change to the mid-spring snowstorm that blew into Central Oregon earlier in the week. Then, the energy shifted.
A white board appeared in the middle of the temporary communication center. Instructors listed names in groups of four to five trainees, marking when they would go up for live rappel evaluations. They needed three successful rappels to re-certify in the smaller helicopters and two in the large capacity helicopters.
One hundred and seventy-five flights launched over the course of the rappeller training week and trainers scheduled dozens of flights the day that OPB was there, in groups of three or four.
As the names went on the board, rappellers checked their standing. Some were wearing green flight suits that they zipped up in preparation.
After a morning of relative quiet, waiting helicopters turned on their engines and a wall of noise reverberated through the forest as the ships took off, circled, dropped and returned.
Each trainee carried 300 feet of rope and a red “belly bag” that held nearly all the essentials a firefighter would need in the backcountry for 48 hours, such as food, water, a fire shelter, a radio, map and other tools.
Once airborne, the spotters opened the helicopter doors and the trainees dropped the heavy rope bags from the side of the ship.
Most trainees stepped onto the aircraft skids two at a time as the helicopter hovered and lowered themselves backwards and upside down with acrobatic ease. They began sliding down, backside first until their heavy boots fell away from the skids and they righted themselves with legs locked together, aimed towards the ground and sliding down at a slight diagonal.
The entire maneuver took about a minute or less.
The pull to return
Andrew Saphier, 43, works with the Central Oregon Rappellers. He’s been on the crew for five years. He successfully re-certified at the week-long training.
He had been a wildland firefighter for five years when he learned about rappel crews.
“I thought that was the coolest job in fire(fighting) and it turns out it was right,” Saphier said.
Now, after half a decade as a rappeller, he said he doesn’t think about rappelling too much and credits the rigor of the rappel training. What was once extremely stressful is now akin to moving on autopilot, he said.
Once a firefighting crew rappels and successfully knocks down a fire, they have to get out of the backcountry, which often means hiking many miles with about 100 pounds of tools and gear on their backs.
Yet despite the physical and mental demands of the job, Saphier and hundreds of other rappellers nationwide return year after year. Most firefighter rappellers work about seven to eight years before bowing out, Florea said.
“Flying around a helicopter is cool and everything,” he said, “but the places we get to be and the people I get to share those experiences with is what keeps me coming back.”
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.