News :: Blog :: Inmate Firefighters Are on Front Lines in California

MARIPOSA, Calif. -- When Tamara Evans was convicted last year of receiving stolen property, she had no idea it would lead to a potential career in firefighting.

The tall, cheerful 30-year-old was in California state prison earlier this year when she applied to become an inmate firefighter. Now, after battling blazes for seven weeks, she is building a résumé that she hopes will land her a dream job: as a U.S. Forest Service firefighter.

"I kind of did this just to get out of prison and the prison mentality," says Ms. Evans, a former butcher from San Diego who helped fight a fire in this entryway to Yosemite National Park two weeks ago. "I didn't realize I would enjoy it as much as I do."

California fire officials can use the help from the state's 4,000 inmate firefighters. After a historically dry spring, the state has been scorched by 2,100 wildfires that have charred 1.1 million acres -- a modern-day record -- since late June.

To fight the blazes, the state has called on 21,000 firefighters, with some coming from as far as Australia. The work is dirty, and fraught with risk, as was evidenced again on Aug. 5 when a helicopter crashed while shuttling crews from a blaze in Trinity County, killing nine people aboard and seriously injuring four others.

The financial cost to fight the fires has been staggering as well, which is another reason California's 62-year-old inmate program -- one of a number across the arid West -- is so helpful now. Inmates get $1 an hour, compared with $15 or more for professionals doing the same work. California isn't required to pay prisoners minimum wage.

State prison officials estimate that inmate firefighters contribute three million hours and save the state more than $80 million a year.

The dollar-an-hour wage irks Susan Tucker, director of the Open Society Institute's After-Prison Initiative, a New York-based prisoners' advocacy group. "The problem is that when people leave prison after so many years, they have nothing," she says. "How are they going to make it?"

There is little complaining about pay on the inmate fire lines. The wages are far more than the dollar a day for work in prison. And depending on their sentences, some of the inmate firefighters also get as much as two days off their terms for each day they spend in the fire camps.

For some, the biggest benefit is potentially lining up a new career outside prison walls. Between 3% and 5% of the inmate firefighters become professional firefighters for state, federal or private crews after their release, according to estimates by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Some municipal fire departments in California bar ex-convicts from employment.

Fire captains often give job recommendations for inmate firefighters, who "certainly have an advantage" over firefighting applicants with no experience, says Dan Sendek, a spokesman for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Mr. Sendek says he knows several former inmates who have excelled as state firefighters.

The inmate firefighters work on hand crews, using chainsaws, shovels and other tools to clear brush -- creating a "fire line" over which it is harder for flames to jump. They often toil alongside professional firefighters, with the only visible difference being the prison-orange jumpsuits the inmates wear, compared with the traditionally yellow firefighting garb.

Kelly Bradshaw, a 39-year-old Long Beach, Calif., resident serving a three-year sentence for drug dealing, contends the prisoners often work harder than the professionals. "Some of them are sitting on their engines pumping water," she says. "We're out there cutting the lines."

The prisoners are supervised by only a couple of unarmed guards or fire chiefs. Although there is the occasional inmate fistfight, problems rarely arise, says Marvin Hopper, a program manager for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The inmates are screened; only minimum-custody inmates and those without a history of violent crime or arson, are allowed to apply to the voluntary program.

A handful of the inmates do try to run every year, but most are caught quickly, Mr. Hopper says. Most of the inmates in the program -- who spend their time in community-service camps statewide when not fighting fires -- have three years or less left on their sentences, says Ray Harrington, the camps liaison captain for state prisons.

Many of the inmates appear to enjoy the work. Prisoners at a base camp here for the now-contained Telegraph fire, which began burning 10 miles west of Yosemite on July 25, say that besides getting practical training there are fringe benefits, like better food.

"I don't hate nothing about it," says Joshu Ferguson, as he leans against a makeshift fire-information center after getting off a 24-hour firefighting shift. Mr. Ferguson, 30, of Long Beach, who was convicted of dealing drugs, says he plans to apply to become a state fireman upon his release from a four-year sentence in February.

He shares the same aspiration as Gabriel Martinez, a 32-year-old Lake Elsinore, Calif., resident convicted four years ago of grand-theft auto and gang activity. Mr. Martinez says he plans to get his former gang's tattoos removed from his knuckles and join a firefighting force after his release in 2011.

"If I can work for a dollar an hour here, why can't I work out there?" he says.