posted May 4th, 2007 - Several teams have currently been training in DeLand, including Norway's team Arcteryx, Denmark's team Blaze, Dynamic Force from the Netherlands, an 8-way team from Great Britain and the Brazilian Air Force team. The training jumps for these teams included the smell of smoke coming from the biggest wild fire in the history of Georgia.

Winds from the north had carried the smoke from Georgia deep into Florida. However, the visibility for jump plane pilots and skydivers was still good enough to continue with any flight operations, and the teams did not have to interrupt their training camps.

The situation changed a few days ago when new wild fires broke out much nearer to DeLand. The first two days only brought additional smoke to the area, even though the smell of this smoke was not very pleasant for skydivers and residents of DeLand and the county of West Volusia.

Things got worse, and today team training and all skydiving activities had to be interrupted in DeLand. Bad memories of the Florida wild fires in the summer of 1999 came back when the thick smoke from many different burning areas made it impossible ro run any skydiving operations in parts of Florida for a long time.

The current situation near DeLand is not even close to the disaster scenario in 1999. However, the smoke is now thick enough to interrupt the local air traffic. There is no FSL competition scheduled for DeLand this weekend, and the smoke from Georgia and Florida will not reach the New England Skydiving League season opener at Connecticut Parachutists in Ellington.

The teams training in DeLand will need the help of some wind to blow the smoke in a different direction. The wild fires are not close enough to DeLand to become a direct threat. However, the thick smoke has the potential to interrupt the training activities and bother the teams.

The Dutch team Dynamic Force with 4-way veteran Paul Hofstee took the interruption easily and with some humor. His team members lighted some cigarettes and fought the smoke from the wild wires their own way.

The NSL News will soon report the 2007 situation in the Netherlands. The teams are still on a "smoke hold".