02B_01.08 - 02B_01.08 | Текст песни

• Тексты песен
• 02B_01.08
• 02B_01.08

We’d all like to jump into a fire, right? Er … I don’t think so, but that was how smokejumper Kerry Franklin explained her career choice to me earlier when I interviewed her for GBC. For those of you who don’t know, smokejumpers are firefighters who are dropped into remote and inaccessible areas to combat forest fires. Here’s what Kerry told me.
Women firefighters are well suited to this kind of work. Weighing on average around 70–80 kilos, we’re the right weight for it. If you’re a lot heavier than that, you descend too fast and hit the ground hard, risking serious injury. And if you’re a lot lighter and there’s a strong wind, it can take your parachute and leave you a long way from your intended landing point.
You mean like in the centre of the fire itself?
Yeah, that’s been known to happen. But we wear a lot of protective gear. Of course we’re aware of our personal safety, but it’s not the first thing on our minds – in this kind of job you can’t wrap people in cotton wool.
No, I imagine not. So, having landed near the fire, what do you do then? I mean, not having a fire engine or a fire hydrant nearby, you can’t exactly start fighting the fire in the conventional way, can you?
You see, we’re like the initial line of attack. We get dropped in with tools – chainsaws, axes, chemicals for fighting fires – we get water pumps too, portable ones. But first we need to assess how bad the fire is, how we think it’s going to develop, and get that news back to base. If it’s cooking pretty good, we’ve got to look for a way to try and contain it. Usually that means finding a natural firebreak.
What’s that?
It’s something like a road, or an area of rock, or thinner vegetation that the fire’s going to have to cross before it continues on its path of destruction. So having located a firebreak, we do our best to make sure it’s going to be effective, getting anything that could burn easily out of the way, sometimes using controlled burning to burn back to the main fire as it approaches the break.
And what’s it like being a woman in this world, because firefighting is traditionally a male-dominated domain?
Fire doesn’t distinguish between men and women, nor do the trainers at smokejumping school for that matter – you either make the grade or you don’t. Having faced the same challenges together in training, those who make it have a natural respect for each other. Sure, doing my training I met a few guys who had a different attitude, but I haven’t met any who didn’t just end up thinking a smokejumper is a smokejumper.

02B_01.08 еще тексты