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| Inmate firefighting force to dwindle |
| By napavalleyregister.com |
| Published: 08/22/2012 |
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California -- Prison inmate firefighters from the Delta Conservation Camp in Solano County are a common sight in wine country. Under CalFire supervision, they fight fires throughout the North Bay and tackle brush-clearing projects in remote corners of Napa County. Last week, these inmates were among the units sent to fight the wildfires in Lake County alongside professional firefighters. In June, they were dispatched to a fast-spreading grass fire in Coombsville, just east of Napa’s Alta Heights neighborhood. Inmate firefighters work under CalFire but are housed at fire camps run by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. But now this source of firefighters is in jeopardy. Under a 2001 law designed to shrink the state’s prison population, the number of volunteer inmate firefighters available from fire camps is expected to dwindle over time, officials said. If this happens, it is unclear what CalFire, which trains the firefighters, will do next. “It’s still too early to determine what will be done; we will be working on that in the near future as more definitive information on re-alignment is vetted out,” CalFire Chief Tim Streblow, who heads the Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit from St. Helena, said Monday. “They’re a huge, huge part of our operation,” Streblow said. Because they are low-risk, non-sex-offender inmates, these penal system firefighters may qualify to serve their sentences in county jails instead of state prisons, officials said. The state’s 3,900 inmate firefighters, who are housed at 44 fire camps throughout California, are paid between $1.45 and $3.90 per day by the state, said Dana Simas, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections. The inmates, who volunteer for a minimum of two years, received two days credit from every day served, Simas explained. “They’re some of the hardest-working people,” said Keith Caldwell, a former fire chief in American Canyon who now is chairman of the Napa County Board of Supervisors. A possible solution that has been discussed is having counties pay the state $46.19 per day per inmate to house county jail inmates at fire camps, Caldwell said. Read More. |
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