The LA wildfires broke my heart, made me stronger after prison

By Jose Ángel Amezcua, especially for CalMatters

This comment was originally posted by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Guest Comment written by

On a cold January day at our Northern California fire camp, I learned that my crew had been sent south. On the bus I kept wondering why they would need our help in a winter fire.

As we got closer, I saw billowing black smoke rising miles into the sky and spreading across the horizon.

For the next three weeks I was one of the hundreds of incarcerated firefighters who helped in the fight and control the deadly fires in Los Angeles. During the fires, I moved through ash-covered Eaton Canyon creating fire breaks, hauling sandbags to prevent mudslides, and clearing fallen trees and debris in Altadena.

I had only fought wildfires before. I had never seen such destruction in a city. In the neighborhoods I saw homes and buildings reduced to rubble and people trying to save what they could. It was heartbreaking to witness the destruction.

But it was also a stark reminder that I was exactly where I needed to be – helping to save the communities I had once hurt.

At the beginning of prison I knew I had to improve, so I attended as many classes and groups as possible. Then the opportunity arose to join a boot camp that would allow me to leave prison and spend time outside. I joined knowing I could gain time off my sentence, but what I gained was so much more.

I joined the Youth Offender Fire Camp program in Growlersburg, a pilot program launched in 2023 that allowed young people under the age of 26 to train as wildland firefighters instead of being held in a high-security prison. In Growlersburg, I noticed a big difference from my time in prison: we had better food, better living conditions, and we got to be outside in the woods.

The Cal Fire captains treated us as equals. I trained as a manual firefighter, setting up fire lines to contain wildfires and clearing vegetation with hand tools. Then I started fighting fires.

Nothing can mentally prepare you to be in the line of fire. You feel the adrenaline and it pushes you to the limit of your strength. Fighting a fire means working 24-hour shifts, sometimes climbing mountains in the dark, using heavy tools to build a fire line.

I didn’t realize our impact until, in one stereotypical moment, we helped a woman find her cat during a forest fire. It showed me the difference our work made to help someone in their darkest moments.

In time I became a sawyer, a person who cuts trees with a chainsaw. I began to enjoy the job and imagined a different future as I watched my team members break free and become firefighters with the support of Cal Fire.

During the Los Angeles fires, the Rose Bowl became our base camp, where we were greeted with gratitude by elected officials, celebrities and community members. For the first time, we realized that people wanted to hear our stories, that the world saw us as more than our past mistakes.

It was an amazing feeling to know that our hard work mattered and that others believed we deserved a second chance.

At firecamp, the rehabilitation and reentry preparation classes I took with the Recidivism Coalition helped me prepare to go home and prepare for my next trip. Camp Fire reduced my 10 year sentence to 5 1/2 years and I got out of prison a few months ago.

Since then I have cherished every moment with my family and wife. Life outside is harder than I expected, but campfire prepared me for the mental challenges of rebuilding my life. It taught me to move forward no matter what.
I had never worked before. I went to prison as a youth. I never believed in my future. Now my calling is to become a firefighter. i am working on getting my record expunged so I can continue to save lives and stop fires from spreading.
When people think of incarcerated people, they often see us as a danger, with our past mistakes exaggerated. Amidst the smoke, ash and destruction of the Los Angeles fires, people saw us as heroes, recognizing the good we can achieve when given a second chance.

It’s been a year since the fires. California raised wages for incarcerated firefighters and made the Growlersburg Fire Camp program permanent. During the fires in Los Angeles, attention to our stories showed that people want to see a second chance, not just for firefighters, but for all incarcerated people who are working to turn their lives around.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.