Inmates who fight fires
Women serving time in California prisons are routinely deployed to fight the state’s wildfires, said Jaime Lowe. For less than $2 an hour, they do strenuous and dangerous work with relatively little training.
S HAWNA LYNN JONES climbed from the back of a red truck with “LA County Fire” printed on its side. Ten more women piled out after her, on the border of Agoura Hills and Malibu, in Southern California. They could see flames in the vicinity of Mulholland Highway, from a fire that had been burning for about an hour. Jones and her crew wore helmets and yellow Nomex fireretardant suits; yellow handkerchiefs covered their mouths and necks. Each carried 50 pounds of equipment in her backpack. As the “second saw,” Jones was one of two women who carried a chainsaw. She was also one of California’s 250 or so female-inmate firefighters. Jones worked side by side with Jessica Ornelas, the “second bucker,” who collected whatever wood Jones cut down. Together they were responsible for “setting the line,” which meant clearing potential fuel from a 6-foot-wide stretch of ground between whatever was burning and the land they were trying to protect. If they did their job right, a fire might be contained. But any number of things could quickly go wrong— a slight wind shift, the fall of a burning tree—and the fire would jump the break. It was just after 3 a.m. on Feb. 25, 2016, when Malibu 13-3, the 12-woman crew Jones belonged to, arrived at the Mulholland fire, ahead of any aerial support or local fire trucks. The inmates— including men, roughly 4,000 prisoners fight wildfires alongside civilian firefighters throughout California—immediately went to work. They operated in hookline formation, moving in order of rank, which was determined by task and ability. The first saw, or hook, leads; second saw is next. Mulholland was Jones’ first fire as second saw; she’d been promoted the previous week. It took only four months for captains to notice her after she began training, and she quickly rose from the back of the hookline, where all inmates start, to the front. This part of Southern California is full of ravines and dry brush. Season after season, its protected lands are prone to landslides, flash floods, and wildfires. The women scrambled over a slope that was full of loose soil and rocks, which made digging the containment line—a trench of sorts—even more challenging. “It was very steep,” Tyquesha Brown, a crew member, told me. “The fire was jumping.” With every step they took forward, it felt as if they were slipping at least one step back. But by 7:30 a.m., a little more than a third of the fire was considered contained. Malibu 13-3 had done its job: The fire didn’t jump the line; it didn’t threaten homes, ranches, or coastal properties. By 10 the next morning, Jones was dead. She was 22. Her three-year sentence had less than two months to go. C ALIFORNIA’S INMATE FIREFIGHTERS choose to take part in the dangerous work they do. They have to pass a fitness test before they can qualify for fire camps. But once they are accepted, the training they receive, which often lasts as little as three weeks, is significantly less than the three-year apprenticeship that full-time civilian firefighters get. “Any fire you go on statewide, whether it be small or large, the inmate hand crews make up anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of the total fire personnel,” says Lt. Keith Radey, the commander in charge of a camp where women train.
When they work, California’s inmates typically earn between 8 and 95 cents an hour. They make office furniture for state employees, license plates, and prison uniforms. But wages in the forestry program, while still wildly low by outside standards, are significantly better than the rest. At Malibu 13, one of three conservation camps that house women, inmate firefighters can make a maximum of $2.56 a day in camp and $1 an hour when they’re fighting fires.
Those higher wages recognize the real dangers that inmate firefighters face. In May, one man was crushed by a falling tree in Humboldt County; in July, another firefighter died after accidentally cutting his leg and femoral artery on a chainsaw. But, after visiting three camps over a year and a half, I could see why inmates would accept the risks. Compared with life among the general prison population, the conservation camps are bastions of civility. They are less violent. They smell of eucalyptus, the ocean, fresh blooms. They have woodworking areas, softball fields, and libraries full of donated mysteries and romance novels.
Still, when they’re at work, the inmates look like chain gangs without the chains, especially in Malibu, where the average household income is $238,000. “The pay is ridiculous,” La’Sonya Edwards, 35, told me. “There are some days we are worn down to the core,” she said. Edwards makes about $500 a year in camp, plus whatever she earns while on the fire line, which might add up to a few hundred dollars in a month; the pay for a full-time civilian firefighter starts at about $40,000.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says that the firefighter program, known as the Conservation Camp