Title:
Earl Cooley: Remembering an Early Smokejumper
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Years ago, a young forester took an unusual new job.
Earl Cooley became one of the first smokejumpers.
Smokejumpers parachute from airplanes. They fight
fires that crews cannot reach quickly or easily from
the ground.
Earl Cooley worked for the United States Forest
Service, an agency of the Agriculture Department.
The Forest Service had a plane that it wanted to use
to drop water bombs onto wildfires. But that idea
failed. So the agency decided to use the plane for
what was then a new practice: smokejumping.
The first fire jump in the United States took place
on July twelfth, nineteen forty, in the Nez Perce
National Forest in Idaho. Another smokejumper, Rufus
Robinson, went first. Then out came Earl Cooley. As
he later described it, the plane was not much more
than half a kilometer above the trees.
The day was windy, and the jump was not as good as
others he had made. He began to turn over in the air
when his chute opened, and there were problems with
the lines at first. But he chose a large spruce tree
to land in near the fire, and climbed down. With
hand tools, he and Rufus Robinson threw dirt on the
fire and dug a line to contain it so the flames
would not spread. They worked through the night and
had the fire controlled the next morning, when other
men arrived from a camp in the area.
Earl Cooley always said he was not afraid being a
smokejumper. Over the years, he worked to develop
the profession. He served as the first president of
the National Smokejumper Association. He also wrote
about his experiences.
But not all had happy endings. On August fifth,
nineteen forty-nine, he was involved in a disaster
at a forest fire near Helena, Montana. He had to
choose where a crew would jump. But the wind changed
and the fire grew unexpectedly, taking thirteen
lives.
Many years later, Earl Cooley told a newspaper that
he still believed he had made the best decision he
could. He retired from the Forest Service in
nineteen seventy-five. But he continued to visit the
mountain where the men lost their lives, until he
could no longer make the climb.
Earl Cooley died on November ninth in Missoula,
Montana. He was ninety-eight years old.
Today, more than two hundred seventy men and women
are smokejumpers for the Forest Service.
Smokejumpers are also used in Russia and other
countries.
And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture
Report.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
