Welcome back to the Learn English podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
We just did an episode about why wildfires are so common in California, the state that I'm from, and that I have lived my whole life in.
Because I am a native Californian, I am completely used to a particular program that we have here in this state.
It is a program for a certain group of people to fight fires, and I realized recently that maybe it's a little bit strange.
Maybe people in other countries don't have this program and might be a little bit shocked to learn about who we have fighting fires here in the state.
If you are interested in learning about this mysterious program that I'm talking about, And of course, if you're interested in building your fluency, listening comprehension, and English vocabulary, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we begin, I want to remind you to look at the description of the podcast episode.
There, you will find links like how to book a lesson with me, and also find the vocabulary list of the words and phrases that I used in the episode.
That way you can take them, study them, and build your English vocabulary.
Let's talk about this program that I am referring to.
Like I said, I have lived in Southern California for my entire life.
I love being from California.
I am so proud to be from here.
But because I'm from here, I am completely used to this program.
And if you don't know, if you haven't watched our previous podcast episodes, you might not know that I teach English online to students all over the world who are learning it as a second language.
Recently, I talked about this program with one of my students and she seemed a little bit shocked.
She seemed a little bit confused about why this program exists and what I'm talking about is that here in California, we have prisoners, inmates fight the wildfires that occur.
It is not all firefighters who are inmates, please do not misunderstand what I am trying to say.
However, we definitely do have inmates, people who are in prison for committing some type of crime as firefighters here in the state of California.
So why do we have them?
Why is it that we use prisoners to fight wildfires?
Well, the reason actually goes back to World War II.
The United States did not originally join the war, but they did after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which was in Hawaii, in 1941.
I did an episode that covered a little bit of World War II.
I talked about the Japanese -American combat regiment that fought in World War II.
I will leave a link for that episode if you are interested.
World War II obviously was a massive war that occurred in Europe and in the South Pacific.
The United States did eventually become part of the war and during that time a lot of men went overseas and fought in the war.
My grandfather was one of them.
He was one of the people who signed up to be in the United States military.
He and all of his brothers served during World War II.
So a lot of men who were able to, who were healthy and the right age ended up going and fighting in the war at first it was voluntary, but as the war continued on more people had to go and there was a draft, so a draft is when people get called to go and serve in the military.
A reminder that military service in the United States is not mandatory.
Men who live in the United States do not need to spend time in military service like they do in other countries.
Normally it is completely voluntary unless there is a war where there is a need for people to go and serve in the war like during World War II.
because there was a draft, many men had to go and fight in the war, there were not that many people left, or there was not that many young, able men left in the country who were not serving in the war.
During this time a lot of women went to work in factories because their husbands or their brothers were fighting overseas, and the factories really needed workers, so women went and worked in factories, and because so many people went overseas, there were also less firefighters.
If you listened to the episode that we did on why there are so many wildfires in California, you know that wildfires are particularly common here in the state.
They occur every year, so we always need firefighters to put out those wildfires and when you get into a situation where you don't have any fireman left because they have all traveled to go fight in a war, you really have to figure out what to do.
In California, what they decided to do was to use prisoners, people who were in prison because they committed some type of crime, they decided to use them to become firefighters.
So at first these prisoners were just clearing brush and reducing the risk of wildfires, but eventually they actually started becoming firefighters.
They started becoming the people who were helping put out active wildfires.
This led to the establishment of inmate firefighting units.
An inmate is another word for a prisoner.
If you say someone is in prison for a crime, if they are incarcerated, which means they are in prison, you can call them a prisoner, but you can also call them an inmate.
During this time period more and more inmates became part of these firefighting teams and they started having a more direct role in fighting fires.
They started being the teams and the squads that would actually respond when a wildfire occurred and they would help put that fire out.
During the 1980s to the 2000s the program continued to grow and really hit its peak popularity.
When the program had the most amount of inmates, it actually had about 4 ,000 of them.
This meant that about 30 % of the state's firefighters were inmates.
That seems like a really large number, right?
30 % of the entire state's firefighters were inmates.
Now, I was born and raised during this time period.
So, that's why I am saying that it is extremely common for me.
I've actually never even really thought that this program was strange because it's existed for longer than I've been alive.
And it was a very popular program when I was a child and when I was growing up.
Like I said, every year in California, we have to deal with wildfires and they will occur somewhere in the state.
and it was just common knowledge that, there was always going to be inmates that were sent to fight these wildfires.
Now the program is a little bit controversial and it might not be controversial for the reasons that you're thinking of.
If you hear that an inmate is fighting fires, you might think that maybe the person will escape prison or maybe they're going to commit some crime while they're out and that isn't really why the program is controversial.
usually the people that are part of these firefighting teams are people that don't really have violent crime that are at low risk of trying to escape that are for the most part the best that you can think of the type of inmate that would not do those things now I'm not saying that never occurs please do not get that wrong but these inmates are selected for this program and there is competition or but there was competition to get into the program, so this really isn't controversial for that reason.
The reason that it is controversial and really, the reason that it started being used besides the lack of men during World War II is that inmates are very cheap to use in terms of labor.
World War II ended, but this program didn't because you don't really have to pay inmates very much money for their work.
However, if you work at a fast food restaurant like McDonalds or Burger King for example you actually get paid $20 an hour which is really high.
Across the United States as a whole, the lowest you can get paid in some states is only $7 .25 so $20 is really high.
The cost of labor in California is very high.
However, when it comes to prisoners, they don't get paid very much because they are incarcerated, because they are in prison.
Inmates do not have the same minimum wage laws.
If you use an inmate for a job, you do not need to pay them as much as you do other people, as people who are not in prison.
And with the firefighting program, they get paid only a few dollars an hour.
At some points in the program's history they only got paid $1 and then $3.
I think right now it's $5.
I might be a little bit wrong on that.
If you haven't watched the previous podcast episodes, if you don't know who I am, I teach English but I also teach at a high school here in the United States.
I teach at a public high school and in the past I did have a student whose father was incarcerated and who was one of the inmate firefighters.
He was part of this program.
Now one time he was showing a video to his friends and his teachers showing his father fighting fires and maybe being a little bit proud of it and one of the other teachers made a comment that his father only got paid a few dollars an hour because the state doesn't consider his father's life valuable that the state was using him to fight fires and was barely paying him anything even though he was putting his life at risk.
Even at the time, I didn't like that comment by that teacher, the student was obviously very proud of his father.
And I think she was trying to say, don't be a prisoner, right?
Don't commit crimes.
Don't get arrested.
Maybe she was trying to make him not so proud of his father who was in prison.
but that is part of the controversy of this program, that these people are fighting fires, there are in dangerous conditions, something could happen.
They could get injured or worse.
They could maybe even die while they're trying to fight these fires and they're not getting paid very much money.
Recently, there is a celebrity here that you might have heard of.
Her name is Kim Kardashian.
When the fires were occurring in Los Angeles, she came out with a statement saying that these inmate firefighters should get paid more.
She was arguing that they should get paid the minimum $20 an hour that fast food workers do.
This has not occurred.
This definitely has not occurred, but there are people obviously trying to push and trying to get these people to get better pay.
Now, another thing that was controversial and has recently changed about the program is that people who were part of this program, because they were prisoners, because they were in prison for committing some type of crime, usually they were not able to become firefighters when they got released from prison.
So, they went through the program, they did the training, they fought fires and then they would leave prison and they couldn't get a job as a firefighter.
Part of the purpose of prison is supposed to be reform to try to help someone reform their ways so they don't have to commit crimes in the future and this program really did give them the training that they needed to become a firefighter that gave them experience but then they couldn't use it afterwards.
Before, if you had a criminal record if you had committed some type of crime that caused you to go to prison, you couldn't be a firefighter and you be an EMT. So an EMT is an emergency medical technician this is someone who responds when the ambulance comes when there's some type of medical emergency the people who are on the ambulance are EMTs and EMTs are also part of a firefighting unit.
A lot of firefighters are EMTs.
When you had a criminal record and you couldn't become one of those that pretty much made it impossible so you could not become a firefighter.
This was a controversial part of the program.
People really did not like that people who were part of the program, inmate firefighters, who had gone through all this training and had this experience weren't able to become firefighters when they got released.
This did change, but it was only recently.
In 2020, just a few years ago, there was a bill that passed that allows people who have gone through the program, who have not reoffended, which means they haven't done any newer crimes, people who really just were part of the program and had good behavior and did everything that they should have done.
Now they are able to become firefighters once they leave the program.
There is also the moral component, the ethical part, whether or not it is ethical, whether or not it is a good thing for society to allow people to fight fires and put themselves in harm's way.
When they don't get paid that much, when they are imprisoned and they are doing this job.
There is controversy on that.
Some people think it is not a good and moral thing.
Some people think it is good because they are getting training, they are getting experience and that can help them after they get released.
One counterpoint is that this is not a mandatory program.
people do not get forced into being a firefighter.
It is an optional program.
People sign up, people apply to be in the program and get selected.
They get training, they get better conditions, they obviously get to leave whatever prison they're in when they go and fight fires.
So there is an argument that it isn't mandatory that these people are signing up for it.
However, of course, there is the other argument that even though they're signing up for it, they should get paid more because they are putting their life in danger.
And because the state really does rely on these inmate firefighters when there is a wildfire, they are in need and the state does need them in order to put out fires when they occur.
Regardless of the controversies, the amount of people in the program has decreased in recent years.
This has to do in part with just California in general.
If you don't know anything about the state, California is a very liberal state.
The two parties in the United States are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
The Democratic Party is definitely the party that is more popular in California.
And part of the liberal policies is to reduce prison sentences for people who commit crimes.
Because there aren't less people imprisoned now than there were in the past, because less people are getting sentenced to very long prison sentences.
There's just less people available to become part of this program.
So there are less inmate firefighters now than there were when I was a child, for example.
We'll see if this changes in the future if less people continue to join, if they get rid of the program or if they start paying people more.
I don't know, like I said I'm recording this in 2025 so we'll see how things change in the future.
For now though, as a native Californian, I know that anytime there is a fire there will be inmate firefighters that are sent to help fight it.
Of course, we are always thankful for anyone who helps stop the wildfires that occur because they occur every year in the state.
All the time we know that there's always a wildfire risk in the state that we live in so we are appreciative of all of the firefighters and it is just one of the things that we're used to, one of the things that we live with here when we live in California.
I hope you learned something from this episode.
I hope you found it interesting.
I don't know, tell me if you ever heard of a similar program where you are.
I think there's two other states that have a program like we do, but it's not very common even in the rest of the United States, So if you've ever heard of something like this, let me know.
If you think this is a little bit shocking or scandalous, of course, let me know, leave a comment and tell me about it.
If you have liked the podcast, if it's just helping you overall with your English, please consider leaving us a rating on whatever app you are using to listen to this podcast on that would really help grow the podcast so we can continue to reach more people.
You can also tell a friend, tell a family member, tell someone who is learning English.
You can follow us on social media at Learn English Pod.
The website is learnenglishpod .com and remember to like and subscribe so you don't miss our next episode when it comes out next week.
Until then, keep learning English.
