"LONG FINAL! SHORT FINAL! STANDBY, KICK!" the pilot shouts.

The kick is actually a choreographed push, but regardless, cargo rolls out the back of the plane, parachutes fill with air and Alaska smokejumpers get their supplies.

This is what wildfire fighting looks like in Alaska, where everything is bigger, the fires are inaccessible and the BLM smokejumpers base looks like a small FedEx or UPS air operation. That is, if employees at those delivery companies did chin-ups at work and everything, including the staff, came with parachutes attached.

In the sphere of dropping heavy cargo by parachute, known as paracargo, there is no comparison to the Bureau of Land Management in Alaska.

The U.S. military, or course, with its far-flung global bases and huge aircraft, is proficient in paracargo.

After that, the BLM in Alaska drops more pounds of cargo via airplane and parachute than anyone else in the non-military world.

"We're the civilian kings of paracargo," says program manager Doug Carroll, who immediately pounds his chest playfully with his fists.

Smokejumper bases are numerous in the Lower 48, but large-scale cargo-think industrial-sized pallets of goods-is rarely needed because of an established network of access roads, explained Jim Raudenbush, chief of the BLM smokejumpers in Boise, Idaho.

"It's all remote up there-you can't drive your supplies to where you need them," said Raudenbush, who was in the 1982 rookie class of Alaska smokejumpers. "Out of necessity they've developed a very robust paracargo operation."

In 2014, during what was considered a slow fire season, Alaska smokejumpers based in Fairbanks dropped about 94,000 pounds of paracargo. The annual average weight for the past 10 years is closer to 280,000 pounds.

Training Drops

At the drop zone, in the hot and dried out Chena River floodplain, the first pass from the twin-propeller cargo plane seems to wake up the Alaska-sized mosquitos.

Covered in spray-on bug repellent, four smokejumpers on the ground set up a target for the training drops and radio the plane with wind speeds.

"Turning final for live cargo if drop zone is clear,"the plane radios back after planning an approach. The shadow of the Spanish Casa 8, coming in low at about 450 feet elevation, looms larger than the plane in the air.

Rescue from Above

A supply plane drops cargo over the Alaska tundra. Once the cargo is out the rear door, the pallet is falling 8 to 12 feet per second with the aid of the massive round parachutes-three or four depending on the weight.

Some pallets crack upon impact, some end up on their side due to momentum, and all of them hit squarely with an anticlimactic thud no more than 30 yards from the bull's-eye.

The varying results from the mid-May training didn't surprise the crew members, who have seen hundreds of landings for those cargo pallets that individually weigh up to 1,300 pounds.

"When it is the same pilot with the same weight, same aircraft and using the same parachutes-it's almost in a vacuum-but still they get different results,"explained Gabe Lydic, a paracargo specialist and one of only five year-round employees.

"There's an art to it but at the same time, there's some variables that you can't control," he added.

CG for Safety

The art of flying with cargo comes down to center of gravity. If the freight shifts or isn't packed evenly, the results can be tragic, as a deadly 2013 crash of a military cargo plane in Afghanistan showed when it was caught on camera.

"Aft center of gravity is the worst scenario-it'll pitch up uncontrollably and there's no way to recover from it," said Russ McCafferty, a pilot for Alaska smokejumpers and paracargo.

Putting the heaviest cargo in the middle of the plane and the lightest near the back door keeps the aircraft even, said McCafferty.

Smokejumper loadmasters arrive at the empty plane via forklift, skateboard and cargo bicycle. Loading is meticulous trial and error because space is tight and the straps used for each pallet have to be a precise length to reach the rear ramp.

Once loaded, the pilot and smokejumper in the role of lead 'kicker' communicate the total weight and then make fuel calculations. For fires close to their base on the U.S. Army's Fort Wainwright, Alaska smokejumpers can load and deliver 5,000 pounds of paracargo in one hour.

Catching Air Since WWII

Smokejumper parachutes are painstakingly cared for, repaired and packed, because the cargo is priceless. Their craft is done in spacious, well-lit laboratories dedicated to parachute performance.

For those who obtain the title of senior parachute rigger, the Federal Aviation Administration even issues an official laminated license, which one Alaska smokejumper calls his "license to use a sewing machine." Most paracargo chutes began their careers as smokejumper chutes and were altered to have a larger diameter.

And some of those careers started in the World War II era, well before the Alaska smokejumpers had their first jump in 1959.

In a random grab of 35-foot paracargo chute bags, the first one pulled was from the Air Force and dated 1960, and the second was made in 1943 by the Irving Air Chute Company in Lexington, Kentucky.

Cargo for all Firefightgers

At Bill Cramer's smokejumper base, everyone jumps.

"It'll keep you honest," says the tall and lean Alaska smokejumper chief from his office that looks out onto the runway.

On the wall next to two flower paintings from his little girls he keeps a state map with numbered pins marking each of his over 200 jumps. Most of the pins are in the interior of the state, but there are a few strays in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to the north and in the islands to the south.

"These guys deliver stuff up to the North Slope, they deliver things down to the Bering Glacier, and every place in between," said Kent Slaughter, BLM Alaska Fire Service manager.

If this scope of distance doesn't easily impress, some context for Alaska's dimensions: more than twice the size of Texas; more coastline than all other states combined; and the BLM alone manages a land mass in Alaska about the size of New Mexico.

It takes a lot of warehouse space, at least four contract planes and plenty of repetitive practice for Alaska paracargo to operate safely during a fire season that logs so many miles.

"Paracargo is one of the most dangerous things we do, but it's also one of the most common," said Cramer. The commonality is that all wildland firefighters in Alaska from all the diff erent agencies rely on the BLM's paracargo program.

If state firefighters need 1,000 feet of hose and pumps, or if Forest Service hotshot crews need an ATV and fuel - the call eventually gets made to BLM Alaska paracargo, where the phone is always answered the same way:

"Jumpers."

Link for story: <a href="http://www.blm.gov/or/mypubliclands/vol4/MPL_4_Rescue_From_Above.php" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.blm.gov/or/mypubliclands/vol4/MPL_4_Rescue_From_Above...</a>