Firefighters are racing to contain the wildfires that continue to devastate Los Angeles, putting their lives at risk as flames reduce entire neighbourhoods to smouldering ruins.
Among them are some 950 inmates from California’s prison system who are helping to fight the fires for about $10 a day.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) Conservation (Fire) Camp Program allows incarcerated people to shorten their sentences by working as firefighters — not an uncommon practice in the United States. They make up about 30 per cent of California’s wildfire-fighting force, notes the L.A. Times.
“As of Friday morning, 939 Fire Camp firefighters have been working around the clock cutting fire lines and removing fuel from behind structures to slow fire spread,” noted an update on the California Corrections Instagram page.
According to reports, nearly 1,000 California incarcerated firefighters are currently fighting wildfires in the state. Some have criticized the practice due to the low pay for the 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 upon release.
But the program is not without controversy. Inmates are paid little for dangerous and difficult work, and critics have accused the state of exploiting a vulnerable population. Inmates are paid up to $10.24 US each day, with additional money for 24-hour shifts, according to the department.
Firefighters with the L.A. Fire Department make from $85,784 to $124,549 US per year, according to the department website. Meanwhile, private firefighters are also hired by some wealthy property owners willing to shell out as much as $2,000 per hour.
At least 24 people have died in the fires that began on Jan. 7. Officials said at least 12,300 structures have been damaged or destroyed.
Dangerously high winds were expected to resume on Monday in Los Angeles, potentially hampering efforts to extinguish the stubborn wildfires that have levelled whole neighbourhoods.
“To all those folks out there who don’t think our formerly incarcerated brothers and sister should not be able to vote or live in your neighbourhoods, just remember who was up on your hill saving your home,” commented an Instagram user on an update posted by California Corrections.
“Los Angeles is being saved by the people they locked up,” added another person on another California Corrections post.
Complicated ethics
According to Smithsonian Magazine, four inmate firefighters have died in the line duty in recent years. One person was struck by a boulder, another was killed by a falling tree, another was killed by a chainsaw, and one inmate died of heart failure on a training hike.
In 2018, Time magazine reported that inmates fighting wildfires are more likely to be hurt than professional firefighters — more than four times as likely to incur “object-related injuries,” and eight times more likely to be injured by inhaling smoke.
Some have questioned the ethics of the choice to volunteer for the program, given the perks include reducing your sentence and criminal record expungement.
CDCR continues to increase the number of incarcerated firefighters assisting <a href=”https://twitter.com/CAL_FIRE?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@CAL_FIRE</a> in Southern CA. As of Friday morning, 939 Fire Camp firefighters are working to cut fire lines and remove fuel to slow fire spread, including 110 support staff. <a href=”https://t.co/rkQu3hWXMm”>pic.twitter.com/rkQu3hWXMm</a>
—@CACorrections
“I understand the argument that can be made that the only reason people are volunteering to go to Fire Camp to experience those humane conditions is because the conditions behind the walls are inhumane, and that’s likely true, and I understand that argument, and in that sense, it’s abusive,” TikToker Matthew Hahn, a former inmate who worked on a fire crew, said in a video last week.
But he added that it’s still one of the highest-paying jobs in the prison system and said the camps “were the best place to do time anywhere in the entire prison system.”
“We got more freedom when we were in Fire Camp, we were outside of the walls of a prison. We went out into the communities and out into nature during the day,” Hahn said.
Other inmates involved in the program have described it as a positive experience. In an essay for the non-profit Marshall Project, inmate David Desmond called it “the best job I ever had.”
“No one treated us like inmates; we were firefighters,” Desmond wrote in the 2023 article.
Royal Ramey, a former inmate and co-founder of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, told CBC News Network the fire camp program has other perks, including creating career opportunities for inmates upon release.
“You get better food, you get to visit in the public-like setting, dormitory living, and also you’re out in the community, doing projects of some sorts, and eligible for time off,” Ramey said.
“But for me, it exposed me to a career I now love.”
How the program works
California’s Conservation (Fire) Camp Program has been around since the Second World War, according to Smithsonian Magazine, although its roots in prison labour date back almost a century.
The CDCR, in co-operation with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Los Angeles County Fire Department, operate about 35 so-called fire camps across the state. Two of the camps are for incarcerated women. They are all considered minimum-security facilities, notes the department website.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said fire crews and water tankers are being positioned in strategic locations as officials prepare for what forecasters are warning will be powerful, dangerous winds.
Inmate volunteers must meet certain requirements to protect public safety. They must be classified as the lowest security status, and anyone convicted of rape or sex offences, arson, or with an escape history isn’t eligible.
Most incarcerated fire crew members earn two days off their sentence for every one day they serve on the crew.
Similar programs exist in other states. In Washington, crew members learn how to conduct prescribed burns, handle dangerous equipment and ensure fires that have been contained stay that way.
And British Columbia’s fire suppression program allows specially-trained inmates to set up and take down firefighting base camps, keep an inventory of supplies, maintain camp equipment and facilities, and test and repair equipment.
‘We turn to prison labour’
Still, as the Marshall Project reported Saturday, the ethics are “complicated.”
Speaking on the independent news program Democracy Now on Monday, L.A.-based activist Sonali Kolhatkar said the fire camp program is indicative of the ways “our spending priorities are so skewed.”
“Yes, it’s true that our fire departments are severely understaffed. So instead of us training more non-incarcerated people or, for that matter frankly, allowing incarcerated people to simply not be incarcerated … we turn to prison labour,” she said.
“Incarcerated firefighters are trying to keep us safe, but they themselves are part of the architecture of violence, and they are the victims of the architecture of violence, as well.”
But Joshua Daniel Bligh, in a 2016 post on the International Association of Wildland Fire’s website, said his time as an incarcerated firefighter in Oregon allowed him to learn valuable skills and feel like he was giving back to society.
“When I sense outrage and shock in the faces of the contract crews who hear how little we make for the work we do, I remember that I could have been sitting in a prison cell in the penitentiary,” he wrote.
