a bigger picture than presented. only state inmate crews are CalFire, LaCounty with adult s and Ventura with YA, as far as I know.lots of contracts and commitments to get state inmate crews. Just does not happen overnight… but would be nice to see. inmate crews are a great resource. Ran those crews for a lot of years. they do a great job and are a excellent resource.
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The other elephant in the room is the reclassification of inmate’s. Those that were level 1& 2 at state level got pushed down to counties. Some counties do in fact have inmate crews. The problem with county programs is each is run differently and there are use/travel restrictions based on the county they are housed in.
There seems to be several problems
not sure of new gov. regs; but years past, LA County had to drop their county crews due to early release programs. LA County crews only responded to fires within LA Co. They where ran by what we called Dinosaur Crew Supervisors (mostly USFS exs). They were some of the best and past on some great experience. Was blessed to have worked with them.
Inmate crews are and have been a great resource and will be. hopefully will be tapped into. be aware of the early release programs of county and even state. hard to keep crews up to standards when they are gone within a few months. was the end of LACounty inmate camp program (not state inmates…but county). hard to keep crews up to par when they are released in days of being trained…
Prop 47 or no just hire regular handcrews pay them decently and it will cost about the same as a g crew. It costs fs more to pay a con crew than a hotshot crew on an incident.
This guy knows
Why? What is the status of Golf ST’s? Are they short staffed this year, due to everything?
A lot of the northern camps closed down due to covid
Oh, ok. The interesting thing is that this is essentially the only fire that’s potentially going campaign. I’m Fed FF. I know that the Fed’s are also dealing with serious staffing issues. Another new development is that, due to over 20 firefighters either having covid or being isolated, Santa Barbara County isn’t supporting any out of county strike teams right now. I’m sure there will be more.
Covid 19 and the governors early release program is decimating the inmate firefighter counts.
Most camps that were locked down had all test come back negative. Most camps 14 day quarantine ended 3 or 4 days ago. Yet the camps are still locked down.
. Something is going on behind the scenes, we all just want to get back in the fight!!!
This whole Covid/early release thing is just a ploy by a certain political party to release inmates. They’ve been after this for years and finally have the right crisis to execute their plan.
I work at a camp, Covid is a non-factor. It’s all politics
Same here and we haven’t had any signs of it. The inmates all have to wear masks when they cross over, but then they take them off when they’re on our side…??? Nothing makes sense anymore.
The big cost with the inmates is the CDC personal. Their hourly pay rate is very high and a high hourly rate on porthole to porthole is unbelievable. The high cost with the early release programs has finally killed the golden goose. Paid crews are the future right or wrong.
If you call working 3000+ hours a year a Golden Goose, then yeah. But those camp cops don’t get paid for sitting at home. They’ve gotta put in those hours away from home, family, and a normal schedule. So why shouldn’t they be paid?
Despite the cost of CDC personnel, it’s estimated that inmate crews save the state $90-100 million a year.
Btw, it’s portal to portal, not “porthole to porthole”, unless maybe you’re in the Navy…
didn’t say they didn’t deserve the $, the cost is what it is
The conversation about custodial costs was going on when I went to camp in 1989. It continued when Ralph Swick and I taught Basic Crew Captain. Don’t worry about something you can not control. CDCR or its’ predecessor say how many officers go. CDCR and CCPOA agree on the wages, All of it pales in comparison to a LAT or VLAT. That is all Carry on
Question for those that may be in the know. What is the status of the camps that run Kitchen Crew and MKU’s. Are there enough of them that can work to feed the troops or are they going to go to private caterers like the Fed’s? Or, in the era of COVID and dispersed camps is it just going to be MRE’s.
I’m not 100% but it seems like the future is going to be prepackaged food. So even if they have the MKUs, the inmates will probably just set everything out and we walk by and grab it??
Oh please no caterers
