The Incarcerated Women Fighting California’s Fires: Santa Monica National Recreation Area

Across California, incarcerated women are sent to the frontlines of wildfires, risking their lives for a chance at reduced sentences and a small paycheck. On Malibu 13-3, an all-women fire crew, the work was brutal, the stakes were high, and the bond between crew members ran deep. When a falling boulder killed one of their own, it exposed the reality behind the program, the risks, the lack of protection, and the lives forever changed in its wake.

Episode Partners 

Sources

• Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires by Jaime Lowe
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374116187/breathingfire

• Conservation (Fire) Camps Program

• CAL FIRE Overview of Wildfire Response
  https://www.fire.ca.gov

• KQED interview with Jaime Lowe
  https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101884769

• High Country News reporting on incarcerated wildfire crews
  https://www.hcn.org/issues/53-7/ideas-books-the-incarcerated-women-battling-wildfires

• Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service)

• Mourning the Loss of Fallen Inmate Wildland Firefighter Shawna Lynn Jones - Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service)