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In-depth

Previous In-depths Landmark land settlement Carbon Conundrum Caribou in Canada The Mackenzie Delta Torngat Mountains Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) Travels with Louis British Columbia's Gulf Islands Moose on the loose Sustainable cities Icebergs Canada's musical landscape Quebec's James Bay Ottawa Valley Green with jade Hunting for cures Wild horses Canada's Bison Canada's place in the world Lessons learned in schools Power of powwows Cougars in Canada Greenland sharks Boreal birds Arctic grizzlies Lake Erie's Fire in the boreal forest Energy matters Parks for all Bighorn sheep Finding our way in the wilderness Shipwrecks of Nova Scotia Canada's grizzly bears

Contents Feature - Forest fires Let it burn! The forest of fire Smoke Jumper Canada's incendiary past GIS Safe campfire Facts Cartographer's table Games CG vault Re:sources

IMAGINE A SUMMER that offers tours of spectacular wilderness areas while simultaneously requiring you to jump from planes at elevations that shrink the forest to the size of a relief map. Usually one pays for such experiences, but these treasured memories were formed on the job for Nik Rust.

"On days like these, it's hard to believe that you're at work. One thing you can say about this occupation is that it provides a bounty of memorable experiences," says Rust, a 30-year-old firefighter with British Columbia's Forest Services Protection Branch. "Other days however, when you are up to your knees in the muskeg with a sixty pound box of hose on your back, sweating through a layer of ash and Deet in a cloud of hungry insects, you are glad you are being paid for it."

Hungry insects are an occupational hazard for all forest firefighters, but Rust is not a typical member of his trade. He works with Canada's only Parattack team, the North Peace Smoke Jumpers, a highly mobile group of twenty based in Fort St. John. As their name suggests, they attack from the air, via parachute from altitudes of 450 metres.

Smokejumping first appeared in Canada during the 1950s and contract crews subsequently worked in the northern parts of several provinces until the mid-1990s. By then, Rust was already a firefighter, but he completed the Parattack training program upon the recommendation of a friend and has been with the team for five years.

Would-be smokejumpers must meet rigorous standards. No previous jumping experience is required, but candidates must have worked for at least one year as a firefighter and be extremely fit. Training for Parattack consists of a two-weeks' intensive ground school course and 10 practice jumps.

On 30-minute standby, the specialized team responds to small wildfires that are usually started by lightning in remote roadless areas. When they arrive, the fire doesn't stand a chance. Together with other members of the initial attack crew, they successfully suppress 93 percent of B.C.'s wildfires under four hectares. Up to 2,500 wildfires rage across B.C.'s woods each year, 1,799 of which were within this four-hectare range in 2002, costing the province between 70 to 90 million dollars.

Crew members wear about 70 pounds of gear during the jump, including a radio, first aid kit, and equipment for rappelling from trees. They jump in twos from a Twin Otter, a fixed-wing aircraft that Rust affectionately calls "bush plane extraordinaire."

His favourite part of the jump is the free-fall — the first five seconds of the dive before the parachute inflates. "This is usually the point at which I yell something in spontaneous celebration," says Rust. "Operating the parachute is like being in a river and paddling a boat that doesn't go very fast, but once the chaos of the exit is over, you feel very secure."

He remembers one particularly memorable jump during which he was able to talk in almost conversational tones with his partner. "We joked and laughed all the way down, admiring the view and making a conscious effort to remember everything."

After grins and mutual words of congratulation, the crew retrieves gear dropped under separate cargo parachutes and gets to work preparing a wet guard. This involves laying hose along the perimeter of the fire, extinguishing the edge and then mopping up the middle portion.

The landscape where they work is just as unusual as their mode of entry. They are mostly called out to the muskeg, a unique marshland environment where sphagnum and moss meet volatile, densely packed spruce trees.

During his career as a firefighter, Rust has enjoyed memorable glimpses of B.C.'s wildlife. Among them, a view from the plane of a lone buffalo streaking across an alpine meadow. During his first year as a Parattacker, he had a close encounter with a bull moose grazing shoulder deep in a pristine lake and watched the water pour off the palms of its enormous antlers.

When he's not fighting fires from April to September, he's selling his furniture and lighting designs out of Propellor, an art gallery on Granville Island that he co-owns with friends from his student days at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.

"Warm modernist is how I'd describe my design sensibilities," says Rust, who feels guilty every summer for leaving his friends to manage the business alone, while he fights fires in the manner of James Bond. "Packing up your life and leaving loved ones behind is always difficult, but I like having a break from Vancouver and getting out into the woods."

Aside from the breathtaking natural scenes and the annual delve into B.C.'s interior, one of the best aspects of the job for Rust is the people he meets. "Some of my favourite people in the world are on this crew," he says. "I am extremely privileged to be living this life, and to not appreciate it would be shameful."

For more information on the Parattack program, visit B.C.'s Ministry of Forests website or call the Protection Program at (250) 387-5965.

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