Hundreds of California prisoners work side by side with thousands of firefighters to combat the devastating attacks, an “essential” task for which they risk their lives with intense work days in exchange for a ridiculous salary. It is estimated that about 930 prisoners with firefighter training They have traveled to the affected areas to combat the spread of the flames, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).
Managed by the Los Angeles County Fire Department (CalFire), inmates are housed in what they call temporary base camps, minimum security facilities where they are provided with services such as food, adequate and clean clothing, portable toilets and lodging to rest. after hard days of work. “In these fire camps there are inmates and firefighters, both (living) together and just inmates” and they all sleep in tents, explains the executive director of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Sam Lewis, to the EFE Agency.
Their workday is intense, like that of any other personnel deployed to the area: they work in 24-hour shifts, some 48 hours, and the affected areas are divided to prevent the extinguished flames from once again posing an active danger in the area. “They’re working in really tough conditions, especially wildfires, where they’re trying to make sure they stop the fire from growing,” Lewis says.
The centers have a portable kitchen to feed the inmates, although sometimes they enjoy other succulent delicacies such as hamburgers from the famous Californian chain In’n’Out or pulled pork sandwiches, he specifies.
A high-risk job in exchange for (almost) nothing
The work that inmates perform daily “requires a great deal of physical training and skill,” Lewis says. They have manual equipment and tools with which they spend the day “cutting stumps, weeds and clearing debris so that there is no fuel that can trap the fire,” he explains.
All this voluntary sacrifice to which hundreds of prisoners are exposed is hardly profitable considering that California’s minimum wage is $16 an hour. Yes ok a reduction in their sentences can be applied“They get paid very little for this, less than minimum wage,” Lewis admits.
Inmates currently make up up to a third of the firefighters mobilized in California fires for a salary that ranges between $5.80 and $10.24 a day, depending on the task assigned, according to a report published by the magazine Forbes. For its part, Los Angeles Times reports that the daily wage can reach $27 for a 24-hour shift.
Criticism for its conditions
In the midst of the devastating wave of fires that have devastated more than 15,000 hectares in Los Angeles County since it began on January 13, personalities such as Kim Kardashian have come out in defense of imprisoned firefighters being called “heroes.” “and asks for an improvement in their salaries. “They are paid almost nothing, they risk their lives, some have died, to show the community that they have changed and are now the first to respond,” he shared on his Instagram account. Instagram.
And he urged the governor of California, “to do what no other leader has done in four decades and increase his salary at a rate that honors a human being who risks his life,” he added. Faced with the voices of those who criticize these conditions as semi-slavery, in force in California since 1915, the secretary of the California Department of Penitentiary and Rehabilitation, Jeff Macomber, defines this work as “an essential part of the effort, and its commitment to save lives and property during these emergencies should not be underestimated.
