More than 1,100 incarcerated firefighters were sent to Southern California in January to fight four different wildfires. As the Palisades Fire ran up a hillside, one strike team saved the life of a resident who was still at his home.
“These firefighters, man, I cannot say enough about what they did for me,” the resident later told a video crew. In the aftermath of the flames, incarcerated firefighters went door-to-door looking for residents who needed help, food or water. Crews then made rounds through burned neighborhoods, looking for hotspots that still posed a threat to what few structures remained. At one property, they cleared debris from a pond where koi fish had survived the flames.
Many of these firefighters were convicted of crimes committed in Los Angeles, said Esteban Nuñez, chief strategy consultant and lobbyist for the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, an organization that supports currently and formerly incarcerated people. “They were able to go out and protect the communities in which some of them had harmed, which to me really exemplifies restorative justice,” Nuñez said…