By SUSAN

MONTOYA BRYAN

Associated Press

RIO PUERCO, N.M. — Flying 3,000 feet above desert scrubland in New Mexico, Nick Stanzak taps the first smokejumper on the shoulder to signal it’s his turn to leap from the twin-engine plane.

In pairs of two, a team of eight elite firefighters from Idaho and Montana parachute down to the dry Rio Puerco tributary of the Rio Grande.

Each carries about 100 pounds of gear as part of regular training to be ready to be dropped close to wildfires that might break out in remote areas of the Western U.S.

Nearly 30 wildfires are currently burning — including an Arizona blaze that forced the evacuation of thousands of people plus others in California, New Mexico and Utah. Federal officials this week raised the preparedness level for U.S. firefighting forces because of the heightened fire activity.

The smokejumpers are anxiously awaiting their next assignment, with tons of gear packed and boxes of supplies, tools and food taped up and packaged to withstand being dropped from the planes while moored to parachutes.

“We’ll be ready when the call comes,” Stanzak said. “Who knows what the weather is going to do in a month, or even two weeks from now.”

There are about 450 smokejumpers nationwide, some working for the U.S. Forest Service and others for the federal Bureau of Land Management as a joint force that can be mobilized as the fire season shifts from one place to another.

Smokejumping dates back to the 1930s, when a regional forester suggested it as a way to quickly provide initial attacks on forest fires.

During World War II, the 555th Airborne Battalion, an all African-American Army paratrooper unit, served as smokejumpers to defend against Japan’s attack on the western U.S. with incendiary balloons.

By the 1960s, the smokejumper program had been expanded to include a network of several bases across the West and in Alaska.