Los Angeles, California – As a series of wind-driven wildfires caused unprecedented destruction in southern California this month, fire crews composed of currently and formerly incarcerated individuals were at the forefront of the fight to contain the flames.
California’s firefighting programme has long been criticised for its reliance on imprisoned workers, who face low pay and dangerous conditions.
But proponents of the programme point out that, in recent years, the state has taken steps to expand opportunities for incarcerated firefighters to pursue careers in the field upon release.
Brian Conroy, a captain at the state firefighting agency Cal Fire, recently led a crew of formerly incarcerated firefighters to battle the Kenneth Fire and Palisades Fire north of Los Angeles.
On a windy morning in mid-January, he explained that about 432 people have passed through a firefighting certification programme for people on parole at the Ventura Training Center (VTC) since October 2018.
“This programme is one of a kind,” said Conroy, a tall, stocky man in a dark blue Cal Fire uniform.
“These guys work well under pressure because they’ve lived a life under pressure.”
Incarcerated labour
About 1,747 incarcerated workers live in a network of 35 “conservation fire camps”, according to California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO). The camps are jointly managed by Cal Fire, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
At the camps, individuals learn firefighting skills, such as clearing brush and handling heavy equipment to create fire lines.They also undergo the vigorous physical training necessary to lug nearly 30kg (65lb) of gear through California’s sometimes steep, difficult terrain.
The role of incarcerated people in the state’s firefighting efforts are substantial: While figures can vary by year, incarcerated firefighters can make up as much as 30 percent of the state’s wildland firefighting force.
Supporters of the programme note that it is voluntary and those who participate can shave time off their sentences.
They also say that spending time outdoors, engaged in work that benefits the community, is an attractive alternative to the banal routines of prison life. Conroy explained many find the work of fighting fires fulfilling and exciting.
“If you talk to some of the folks on these crews, they’ll tell you it’s the best thing that ever happened to them,” Conroy said.
Explosive wildfires
But the work is strenuous and sometimes dangerous. And using incarcerated workers offers significant cost savings for the state, leading to scrutiny of the motivations behind the programme.
“The lives of incarcerated people are not expendable,” Amika Mota, the executive director of the Sisters Warriors Freedom Coalition, an advocacy group, said in a statement on Monday.
Mota herself has been an incarcerated firefighter, and her organisation hopes to push for greater fire safety for all people in California’s prisons. She pointed out that, when wildfires approach prisons, authorities are sometimes slow to move the people inside away from harm.
”They deserve safety as much as the rest of the impacted community,” she said.
Critics also point to the discrepancy in pay as one of the firefighting programme’s downsides.
Incarcerated workers are paid just a fraction of the wages that non-incarcerated crews receive. They receive between $5.80 and $10.24 a day, a figure that can increase by $1 per hour when they are deployed to fight fires.
Still, even with that bump, daily wages only amount to about $29.80 for 24 hours of work.
By comparison, the monthly base salary for a Cal Fire employee is between $3,672 and $4,643, with an additional $1,824 to $2,306 for “extended duty week compensation” — a term for the hours worked beyond a normal schedule.
Critics also note the need for extra hands on the fire line is also growing, making an incarcerated workforce all the more attractive to state officials.
California’s fire season is now year-round. January, for instance, is not typically when the state sees strong fire activity, but months without rain created conditions for explosive fire growth in the southern region’s shrubby chaparral landscape.
On January 7, both the Palisades and the Eaton fires erupted. The official cause of the fires remains unknown, but early speculation has fallen on faulty electrical equipment.
Winds as strong as 160 kilometres per hour (100 miles per hour) helped stoke the flames, making them nearly impossible to contain. They spread across the coastal neighbourhood of Pacific Palisades and the historically Black community of Altadena, levelling buildings in their paths.
According to Cal Fire, the Eaton Fire and the Palisades Fire now rank as the second and third most destructive in state history, with 9,418 and 6,662 structures destroyed, respectively. At least 17 people have been killed in the Eaton blaze, along with 11 in the Palisades.
“The devastation is a very hard pill to swallow for anyone who has been doing this for a long time,” Conroy said. “When someone loses their house, it’s not just the house. It’s everything they lose with it. It’s the memories of childhood, the pictures on the wall.”
But the status of the workers who are tasked with containing the flames — and the compensation they receive for doing so — remains a matter of persistent debate in California.
Legislative steps
The state legislature has taken some steps in recent years to change the incarcerated firefighter programme, in response to some of the criticism.
In September 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed bill AB 2147, which allowed formerly incarcerated firefighters with histories of nonviolent offences to have their records expunged.
That, in turn, opens them up to opportunities to pursue careers that their criminal records might otherwise hinder, including professional firefighting and emergency services.
Senator Eloise Gomez Reyes, who sponsored that bill, told Al Jazeera in an emailed statement that the legislation seeks to “make sure that once firefighting skills are developed by incarcerated individuals that they are then offered an opportunity to continue to serve their community as full time firefighters”.
This month, state assembly member Isaac Bryan also introduced legislation that would require incarcerated firefighters to be paid the same hourly wage as the lowest paid non-incarcerated firefighter.
The bill could be heard in the legislature’s fiscal committee as early as February 15.
Andrew Hernandez, a 41-year-old who is completing the programme at Ventura Training Center and recently sent in a job application to Cal Fire, said that, when he first entered prison, he never imagined that he would become a firefighter.
“Not in a million years would I have guessed,” he laughs, calling the programme “life-changing”.
“Some of us made bad decisions. Some of us did bad things. But I want to level out the playing field. I want to do something to give back.”
