Inmates Help Squelch Fires --and Shave Their Terms

Staked out in a rugged and remote canyon of the Angeles National Forest, the dusty camp is surrounded by a 10-foot-tall barbed-wire fence.

But there are no spotlights and no armed guards or dogs at the encampment of drug dealers, burglars and other minimum-security prisoners serving their sentences in the wilderness.

The fences are not for keeping the prisoners in. They’re to keep the public out.

Donald Dunigan, a convicted mugger, is one of 150 prisoners who live in one of two corrugated metal dormitories at the camp in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The prisoners are paying their debts to society by fighting forest fires, a back-breaking job for which they get little compensation except for a measure of freedom that their counterparts behind high-walled prisons do not.

“We run the camp pretty much by ourselves,” Dunigan said. “The way we conduct ourselves depends on whether we can stay or not.”

For every day that Dunigan spends at the camp, he shaves a day off his term.

There are 33 such camps in California. Established in 1946, they are operated by the California Department of Corrections and the California Department of Forestry.

Living Quarters

Camp 19, located in the Angeles National Forest 35 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, is much like the others. Along with the dormitories, there is a kitchen and separate sleeping quarters for the dozen or so Department of Forestry foremen who lead the prisoner-firefighter crews.

And, if predictions by state fire officials prove correct, Dunigan and the others at the camp are due for a hot fire season.

Alarmed by unusually dry weather rapidly turning Southern California’s forests and brushland into kindling, the Department of Forestry declared April 4 to be the official start of the fire season--the earliest such date in memory. To combat the threat, officials from Santa Barbara to San Diego began hiring seasonal firefighters to help staff wilderness fire stations around the clock.

They will have the help of 3,838 prisoner-firefighters statewide.

Even before the beginning of the fire season, the prisoner-firefighters were at work five days a week, eight hours a day.

After a rigorous two-week training stint during which they learn the basics of firefighting, the prisoners are farmed out to the camps where they begin each day at 6:30 a.m.

By 8 a.m., they are assigned their work, with most heading out to cut fire lines along ridges. The fire lines help stop advancing flames. Without a line, fires can rage out of control and destroy thousands of acres of brush and forest before they can be stopped.

The prisoners who aren’t working on break lines are sent to clear brush in the foothills above residential areas and can be summoned to help authorities in other natural disasters, including floods and various rescue operations.

When they’re clearing lines during a fire, the prisoners earn $1 an hour; otherwise their wages are about $1.50 a day.

Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Mylan Rupel, commander of Camp 19, says that without prisoner-firefighters, “California could not cope.”

Not Violent Criminals

“In one month last year, we chalked up 2,000 man-hours,” he said. “These are not violent criminals. They’re good men and hard workers coming to the end of their (prison) terms. Without them, we could not afford to fight all the fires. We simply wouldn’t be able to function.”

Don Edwards, a firefighter specialist who has served as a foreman at Camp 19 for nearly two years, battles fires alongside the prisoners.

“It’s a working relationship, not one where friends are made,” Edwards said, “but we have a great deal of respect for each other.

“Sometimes we give them orders they have to obey within an instant. If we have people who can’t follow directions, we ship them out.”

As foreman, Edwards is responsible for teaching the prisoners how to use the tools they need to fight fires--chain saws, a pickax-like tool called a “Polaski” and a rake known as a “McCloud.”

“While most of our firemen are manning engines and hoses, the prisoners are constructing a 10-foot-wide fire line. We (firemen) also cut lines, but when you have a whole crew it goes a whole lot quicker.”

Escapes, by the way, are not a problem.

“It’s not unusual for inmates to walk away,” Rupel said. “But most escapes occur because of problems they’re having at home--some guy’s wife leaving him or some such. It’s very rare that we don’t recapture them. Usually, we just pick them (up) at their homes.”