Firefighters are rushing to contain the forest fires that continue to ravage Los Angelesputting their lives at risk as flames turn entire neighborhoods into smoldering ruins.
There are some among them 950 inmates from the California prison system who help fight fires for about $10 a day.
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Conservation (fire) camp program allows inmates to shorten their sentences by working as firefighters — not an uncommon practice in the United States. They make up about 30 percent of California’s wildfire-fighting forces, he notes LA Times.
“As of Friday morning, 939 firefighters from Fire Camp have been working around the clock cutting fire lines and removing fuel behind structures to slow the fire’s spread,” the updated release said. California Corrections Instagram page.
According to reports, nearly 1,000 inmate firefighters in California are currently battling wildfires in the state. Some have criticized the practice because of the low pay for firefighters, but Royal Ramey, a former inmate and co-founder of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, says the program helps create career opportunities for inmates after release.
But the program is not without controversy. Prisoners are paid little for their dangerous and difficult work, and critics blame the state exploiting a vulnerable population. Inmates are paid up to $10.24 each day, with extra money for 24-hour shifts, according to the department.
Firefighters from the LA Fire Department they make $85,784 to $124,549 a year, according to the department’s website. Meanwhile, some also hire private firefighters wealthy property owners ready to set aside as as much as $2,000 per hour.
At least 24 people died in the fires that broke out on January 7. Officials said at least 12,300 structures were damaged or destroyed.
Dangerously strong winds are expected to continue Monday in Los Angeles, potentially hampering efforts to extinguish stubborn wildfires that have leveled entire neighborhoods.
“To all those people who don’t think our brothers and sisters who have been incarcerated shouldn’t be able to vote or live in your neighborhood, just remember who was on your hill saving your home,” one Instagram user commented update released by California Corrections.
“Los Angeles is being saved by the people they locked up,” another person added another post of California corrections.
Complicated ethics
According to Smithsonian magazinein recent years, four inmate firefighters have died in the line of duty. One person was hit by a boulder, another by a falling tree, a third by a chainsaw, and one prisoner died of heart failure while hiking.
In 2018 Time magazine reported that inmates fighting wildfires are more likely to be injured than professional firefighters—more than four times more likely to suffer “object-related injuries,” and eight times more likely to be injured by smoke inhalation.
Some are questioned ethics of the choice of volunteering in the program, considering that the benefits include a reduction of the sentence and erasure of criminal record.
CDCR continues to increase the number of inmate firefighters assisting @CAL_FIRE in Southern California. As of Friday morning, Fire Camp’s 939 firefighters are working to cut fire lines and remove fuel to slow the fire’s spread, including 110 support personnel. pic.twitter.com/rkQu3hWXMm
“I understand the argument that can be made that the only reason people volunteer to go to Fire Camp to experience these humane conditions is because the conditions behind the walls are inhumane, and that’s probably true, and I understand that argument, and the sense in that, it’s offensive ,” TikToker Matthew Hahna former inmate who worked on a fire crew, said in a video last week.
But he added that it was still one of the highest-paying jobs in the prison system and said the camps “were the best place to serve a sentence anywhere in the entire prison system.”
“We got more freedom when we were at Fire Camp, we were outside the prison walls. We went into the communities and into nature during the day,” Hahn said.
Other inmates involved in the program described it as a positive experience. In an essay for non-profits the Marshall project, inmate David Desmond called it “the best job I ever had.”
“Nobody treated us like prisoners; we were firefighters,” Desmond wrote in a 2023 article.
Royal Ramey, a former inmate and co-founder of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, told CBC News Network that the fire camp program has other benefits, including creating career opportunities for inmates upon release.
“You get better food, you get to visit in a public setting, you live in the dorms, and you’re also out in the community doing some kind of projects and you’re entitled to time off,” Ramey said.
“But for me, it exposed me to a career that I love now.”
How the program works
California’s fire protection program has been around since World War II, it said Smithsonian magazinealthough its roots in prison work go back almost a century.
CDCR, in cooperation with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Los Angeles County Fire Department, operates about 35 so-called fire camps across the state. There are two camps for female prisoners. All are considered minimum security facilities, according to the department’s website.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said fire crews and water tankers were being deployed in strategic locations as officials prepared for what forecasters warned would be strong, dangerous winds.
Volunteer prisoners must meet certain conditions to protect public safety. They must be classified as the lowest security status, and anyone convicted of rape or sexual offenses, arson, or with a history of escape is not eligible.
Most incarcerated fire crew members earn two vacation days for each day they serve on the crew.
Similar programs exist in other countries. in washington, crew members learn how to conduct prescribed burns, operate hazardous equipment, and ensure that fires that have been contained stay that way.
AND British Columbia Fire Suppression Program enables specially trained inmates to set up and remove base camps for firefighting, maintain inventory of supplies, maintain camp equipment and facilities, and test and repair equipment.
‘We turn to prison work’
Still, like Project Marshall published on Saturday, ethics are “complicated.”
Speaking on an independent news program Democracy now on Monday, LA activist Sonali Kolhatkar said the fire camp program is indicative of how “our spending priorities are so skewed.”
“Yes, it’s true that our fire departments are severely understaffed. So instead of training more people who aren’t incarcerated, or for that matter, allowing inmates to simply not be incarcerated … we’re turning to prison labor,” she said. .
“The imprisoned firefighters try to protect us, but they themselves are part of the architecture of violence, and they are victims of the architecture of violence.”
But Joshua Daniel Bligh, in 2016 on the International Wildfire Association website, said his time as an incarcerated firefighter in Oregon allowed him to learn valuable skills and feel like he was giving back to the community.
“When I feel the anger and shock on the faces of the contract crews who hear how little we earn for the work we do, I remember I could be sitting in a jail cell in a penitentiary,” he wrote.
