Tuesday, July 9, 2024
Smoke Jumpers Museum
This morning, I started out making phone calls for future campsites. We have one week unreserved before Yellowstone. Joe had picked out a possibility last night so I called them but they were full. They gave me four recommendations. I called the first one and had to leave a message so I stopped there, got Joe up and we made it to McDonald’s for breakfast, which was just right up the street. While we were there, the campground called me back, but I didn’t have my dates with me so I told her I would call her back. We went back to the camper and I called her back, and we got that taken care of so now we have a place to stay into August.
Our agenda today was the Smoke Jumpers Museum. We missed the ll:00 tour by 30 minutes so we knew we would be coming back here later today. We watched 5 short videos about the history of smoke jumping. The museum itself wasn't very big.
We then drove over to the Museum of Mountain Flying, which was part of the smoke jumpers campus and just up the street. Several of their old planes were on display, along with their packs and what goes in them, their suits, etc. There is also a NOAH weather station here, which makes sense since the weather and wind are so much a factor in fires and smokejumping.
This plane was used in the Mann Gulch Fire disaster and was later restored in 2018 and made the trip to Normandy to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of that invasion. It was renamed "Miss Montana."
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Joe drove a Jeep similar to this, maybe a little newer, when he was in the Army.
There was a movie made about the Smoke Jumpers. I don't know if it is still available anywhere but I would like to watch it. I believe its about the Mann Gulch Fire, where they lost 12 of the 15 smokejumpers and that was the beginning of the smoke jumpers.
At that museum there was a big poster about a Governor's Proclamation and a picture of somebody receiving an award at the Wilma Theater in Missoula, so of course we had to go track down the Wilma Theater. Joe wanted to drive around in downtown Missoula just to get a feel for the place so we did that and found the theater, which was closed.
It looked pretty grand and is still in use. It is a "historic space housing an ornate, 1,063-seat theater for live performances, plus a small cinema." Unfortunately, we couldn't get inside.
We found a place for lunch that specialized in fried chicken. Parking was a bit of a problem because there were parking meters and they don't just take coins anymore. This one did, but we didn't have any coins. We figured out how to use the credit card, and put it in for $1.00 for an hour. There is always a learning curve with them and we try to avoid them. We paid for an hour, but it took so long to get our order that we had to feed it another hour, but right after I went out to do that, Joe saw the parking meter guy walking by so that was a good decision. It took almost an hour for us to get our food, but we got out of there just in time to make it back to the smokejumpers museum for the 4:00 tour. Which was fascinating and we had a very good leader. However, she is not a smokejumper.
Our tour guide took us through the different rooms and showed us the jobs that were going on. There were a few smoke jumpers inside doing their own chores because they are responsible for maintaining their equipment in their downtime. They rotate through the system, and when they are "1", they are suited and ready all day, except for putting on their jump suit. It takes about 10 minutes from a call until they are in the air. But when they are on duty and not fighting fires, they work on equipment, not just their own. They all must know how to do everything involved, including sewing. Every time a parachute is deployed, it is brought back in and inspected before being used again.
They wear 80-pound packs when they jump. The plane then drops supplies and they must gather all of them up and put them in a bag to take with them to the fire.
This is the folding room, where tents and chutes are repacked, then placed on the shelf indicating they are ready to be reused. They are dated and must be checked and repacked, I think she said after 90 days, if they haven't been used.
We got to look inside the planes. There were 2 on the ground, a 10-seater and an 8-seater.
They have a few other bases around the country, and can be deployed anywhere in the states if needed. Recently the Albuquerque base deployed a team to Ruidoso. I understood from them that the fire there is now under control, but the "ranger" at the desk said Ruidoso was a train wreck. We didn't ask him to explain.
Contrary to some opinions, including mine, firefighters do not fight forest fires at night. They go back to their safe zone every night. When the fire is out and they’re done, they are responsible for carrying all the equipment back out to wherever they’re going to get picked up. By the way, they have to retrieve their parachutes, even if they are in trees.
Their campus backs up to the Missoula airport, which makes sense. There is a dormitory, but none of the smokejumpers stay there overnight. They all return to their homes in Missoula if they aren’t out fighting a fire. The dorm is used mostly by rookies who haven’t yet qualified, or visiting government employees. The museum complex was basically on the same road that we were camped on so it was an easy drive back to the RV.
We were back to the RV by 4:45. There were people in the pool and people walking to the pool so we talked about that but decided we really didn’t have the energy to walk back up there and it did not look like there was parking by the pool. My phone shows that it got up to 99 here today. Our RV cannot keep up with these temperatures. It was a little warm inside until after the sunset. It doesn't get dark until about 10:30, I think it was 86 inside when we got back. But by the time we went to bed (too late), we were able to turn it down.
Coincidentally, after all of our interest in fires today, I was notified tonight that our high school in Decker, Indiana, was on fire. It has been closed for 50 years probably, but was currently owned by a sawmill in town. We haven't heard any details about what caused the fire, but there was a storm and tornado watch in the area at the time. Very sad loss to many of us.
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