Comment: No, they're saving private corporations millions of dollars. Why pay for firefighters when you can pay for slaves?
Somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of the state's forest firefighters, or nearly 4,000 people, are low-level felons from state prisons, Mother Jones reported. Working in "Conservation Camps" set up by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the inmates are trained to clear brush that can potentially trigger a fire and also battle the flames when a blaze does occur.
In return, they make somewhere between $1.45 and $3.90 per day, according to the CDCR. They also have two days knocked off of their sentences for every day they work.
Speaking with KQED, inmate Cory Sills said that, despite sometimes having to work 24-hour shifts, he generally feels like the camps are a good thing, especially since prisoners are treated better than they are behind bars.
"There's an assembly where we have a formation in the mornings and it was like my second or third day and the lieutenant comes out and he goes, 'Look, we'll treat you like men first, firefighters second, and prisoners if we have to,'" he said last July. "That right there, that stuck in my head for two years now because now I have a chance to be treated like a man."
Comment: This pipeline extends through the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan, which have suffered extensive wildfires this year.
Describing the biggest evacuation effort in Saskatchewan's history, Premier Brad Wall said recently, the number of evacuees affected by raging wildfires in the province's northern regions is "unprecedented" with the amount of hectares burning as about 10 times the average year.
Pipeline detectors alerted that "hydrogen sulphide levels were too high", indicating that some of these wildfires may have been fueled from outgassing, possibly 'sparked' by an increase in atmospheric electric discharge events, such as lightning strikes. See also:
Study: Wildfire seasons are more destructive and lasting longer almost everywhere on Earth