About Troop

THE SMOKEJUMPER

Served 24 years as a Smokejumper 300 Round parachute jumps with the U.S. Forest Service All over lower 48 States Throughout Western US, and all through the Ozarks Mountains in Oklahoma and Arkansaw.  Plus the entire Appalacian Deciduous Mountain States of Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.  Then 226 rough terrain jumps on Ram Air Parachutes all over Alaska and some of Canada.  The number of jumps not as important as the different continental fuel types encountered, and the different types of tools and methods to be effective on suppression, because those were vital in understanding what needed to be developed to make suppression more productive and effective.

SERVICE AND TACTICS

After two years of smokejumper operations I was drafted into the military.  I ended up in the Marine Corps, dropped off in the jungles of South East Asia as a 2nd Lieutenant of Infantry Marines.  Served as a Rifle Platoon Commander, then a Rifle Company Commander and a Special Reaction Force Leader to bail out friendly units in big trouble in enemy contact.  Basic Infantry 360 defensive tactics and true hand to hand assaults and thrashing confrontations really did earn skill that I could later apply back to civilian wildland fire fighting frontiers.  After my Intantry experiences I extended my tours in Vietnam to enter the air war where I servered as a tactical air controller flying around in a OV-10 Bronco running close air support air strikes on enemy forces in contact with our people.  At this time, because of my prior life as a forester and smokejumper they the intelligence folks asked me about the Agent Orange project and if it helped people like me to see the forest floor better.  I took charge of the problem and told them Agent Orange makes the ground harder to see and that the discoloration makes things better for the enemy, except it disturbs the Tropical Rain Forest and turns it into a wildfire ecosystem during the dry season.  As long as you have slope you can burn i and kill bad guys who have no ability to save themselves.  I indeed used fire to kill and with fire you get them all.

MISSION CONTINUES

After war service went back to my humble job of being a Smokejumper.  When I got laid off in the winter I ended up building 10 log homes.  After Smokejumping I took a job with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Alaska where I was a Fire Management Officer and worked of some 23 million acres of different wildlife refuges making decisions on what to do on fires.  Also Because Global Climate Change was first noticed in the Arctic, and I had both fire experience from smokejumping backdrop, I merged that with the 360 military defensive concepts into a scheme to go beyond suppression and gear up for surviving fire storms when conditions are too strong and fast moving to fight and stop firestorms before they kill people and structures.

ABOUT TROOPS