Firetruck Crash Victim Was on Inmate Crew

Brian Carrasco, a 35-year-old West Covina man who died this week when the firetruck he was riding in crashed, was one of hundreds of state prisoners who help to fight fires each year as part of a little-known state Department of Corrections program.

Carrasco and 12 other inmates were on their way to a lightning-sparked brush fire in the high desert Monday when the firetruck they were in hit loose gravel on a rain-slick roadway in Lancaster and rolled several times, said Inspector Ed Loney of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Carrasco died while being flown by helicopter to Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. The other crew members were taken to Lancaster and Antelope Valley community hospitals. Four remained hospitalized Tuesday night with injuries that were not life-threatening, Loney said.

Carrasco’s mother, who lives in Ontario, was making funeral plans for her son, said Capt. Joyce Ballard, who supervises fire conservation camps in Southern California.

“She was very proud of her son because he was doing work he enjoyed,” Ballard said of Carrasco’s mother, who was not identified.

Carrasco had volunteered under a nearly century-old program that allows low-risk state prison inmates to cut their sentences in half by serving their terms at conservation camps. Only nonviolent criminals may participate. Carrasco, for instance, was convicted of possession of drugs.

*

More than 4,000 inmates are stationed at 38 camps throughout the state, including five in Los Angeles County.

“They are very carefully selected minimum-custody inmates,” said Mack Reynolds, the Department of Corrections’ lieutenant for conservation camps. “When they go to these camps, if they don’t behave themselves, they go back to prison.”

The inmates also clean parks and cut trails, but they are most active during fire and flood seasons, when, dressed in bright orange shirts, they work alongside regular fire crews.

This week, the inmates are fighting fires throughout the state.

The Mt. Gleason camp off the Angeles Forest Highway, where Carrasco was assigned, was empty Tuesday. The crews there had been deployed to various fires around Southern California, including the Juniper Flats fire in Riverside County and the Camp Pendleton fire in San Diego County.