In 2022 alone, the state of California experienced 7,490 wildfires, according to The Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program. 362,455 acres burned and 876 structures were lost. And in the face of enormous need, firefighter shortages persist. In fact, since World War II, California has relied on a particular population to bolster their firefighting force: inmates.
This is one man’s story of fighting fires, but only after he found himself behind bars.
Brandon Smith came from a family of public servants.
“My great-great-grandparents were crossing guards. My grandmother is a retired teacher. My grandfather was a custodian. My mom was in the army. Now she's a nurse. My uncle's in the army now. I come from a group of folks that want to help others in need,” he says.
Brandon was a good kid – even kind of a nerd. He did well in school and went to UC Berkeley. After graduation, he floundered. In an effort to make money, he sold some pot (before cannabis sales were legalized in California). He got busted, a few times, actually, and ended up in prison.
“I remember being in the bed on my bunk late at night crying like, Lord, what do I do?” he says. “I felt ashamed. … I felt that I was a public nuisance.”
Because all of Brandon’s crimes were low-level and non-violent, he was a great candidate for fire camp, formally referred to as California Conservation Camp. A prison counselor asked if he’d be interested.
“She said, ‘Fire camp is a work release program where you all go out into the world every day and work and you go fight fires.’” Brandon says. “So I said, ‘Okay. Um, no thank you. Thank you. But no thank you.’”
He had seen the movie “Backdraft” as a kid – it was enough to create a lifelong aversion to fire in general.
When he told other inmates about the offer, and his refusal, they said he was nuts. They described it as “like a summer camp in the woods.” No small cells, no gun towers, no barbed wire, and the food was way better.
All he’d have to do is face his fears and risk his life fighting fires. No big deal, right? But, the next day, he told his counselor he was in.
First things first, Brandon had to train to be a firefighter.
“I had to show that I could walk for miles, run for miles, a certain amount of push-ups, sit-ups, squats, all that kind of stuff, pull-ups. It was a struggle for me,” Brandon says. “Because I had never been, like, a physical person.”
After months of training, Brandon was sent to Bautista Conservation Camp. It was a half fire station, half mini-prison about 90 minutes east of Los Angeles in high desert territory. This home-away-from home was unlike anywhere he’d ever lived before.
“I had never experienced nature like that,” Brandon says. “Nighttime was really nighttime, you know, it was dark, you didn't hear cars up and down the freeway. The smell of the pine trees, you could hear the water in the creek and all that kind of stuff.”
Brandon and the other inmates at Bautista spent a lot of time doing things other than fighting fires. Cleaning roadsides, making sandbags, clearing brush. They trained to use chainsaws and build fire breaks – gaps in foliage to slow the spread of wildfires. He had tons of time to perfect his skills and got really good with a chainsaw. Months went by with no fires – life at Bautista became routine. And then his first call came in.
“And it's like, oh, let's go. No time to think or you’re gonna be scared. And so we out there. Put on the gloves, had a radio on. The captain gives us the plan, I turn on my chainsaw and here we go. I'm cutting down trees. I'm cutting down brush because I'm trying to create a fire break and everybody's following with me with their tools. We sweating, everybody's calling out, ‘safety!’ and ‘look out for the tree!’ and ‘where's the fire at?’ The fire's right there. Like two-to-four-foot flames, just gushing at you with the wind and it gets hot.”
They worked all night, the fire was finally under control come morning. On their way back to camp, the town they had just saved from the blaze came out to show their appreciation, lining the road, waving and saying thank you.
“It was an incredible feeling,” Brandon says. “It's a feeling of, you know, lifting your head up, poking your chest out, like, yeah, I did that. I have walked around with my head low. I have walked around feeling like a nobody. And now was one of my proudest moments that I'd had. Like people are thanking me even because of my faults.”
That was the beginning of Brandon’s pursuit of a career as a firefighter. By the time his sentence was up, Brandon worked on over 30 wildfires. After 2 years and all that experience, he was confident he could land a job easily. Firefighters were in high demand, after all.
“So I started going to fire stations, dressed up. ‘Here's my resume. Are you hiring?’ ‘No sir, you're not qualified’,” he says. No one was willing to hire an ex-con, even one who had all the training and experience they were looking for. “But it's like, are you saying my training was fake? Are you saying, I don't know, are you saying my experience is not experience because I was incarcerated?”
A chance meeting with a fire chief at a wildland firefighting certification program changed all that. He explained his situation to her. She said once he completed the course to hand his resume directly to her, and she would take care of the rest.
Brandon and his friend from Fire Camp, Royal Ramey, did just that. They landed their first jobs as professional firefighters, on-call working 2-week stints. Out in the field, Brandon and Royal shocked the other firefighters with their technical prowess.
They made friends, and connections, and eventually got full-time firefighting jobs.
And just before things started to feel routine again, life had one more surprise for Brandon: a run-in with his original crew.
“We're in a whole bunch of mix of pine trees and deciduous trees. We're in a very, very high elevation, so the air is thin. We're working for a couple of hours – tired,” he says. “So, during the break I hear somebody call my name, ‘Brandon. Brandon!’ And it's the crew from Hemet. They're like a couple hundred feet away.”
It was the inmates from Bautista Conservation Camp.
“So we start telling them all of our journeys and what we did, tips and tricks and what not to do,” Brandon says. “And then at the end we say, ‘Look, we gonna give the correctional staff and the captains our phone numbers. If y'all want to do this, when y'all come home, call us. And so that's where it started.”
Brandon and Royal eventually created The Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program to give former fire camp inmates the opportunities he didn’t have when he got out of prison. He’s married with two kids. He bought a house, with a garage and backyard, he likes to point out.
The Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program was launched in 2015 and incorporated in 2018. It offers on-the-job training, reentry support, and connections to firefighting careers to primarily formerly incarcerated men and women of color.
In 2022, Brandon and Royal were recognized with a Leadership Award from the James Irvine Foundation for their work in their community. Since 2015, FFRP has helped an estimated 3,000 current and formerly incarcerated individuals prepare and apply for firefighting careers.
To hear even more of Brandon’s story, listen to this episode of Home. Made.
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Episode Transcript
STEPHANIE: When he was a kid, Brandon Smith was surrounded by a family of public servants.
BRANDON: My great-great-grandparents were crossing guards. My grandmother is a retired teacher. My grandfather was a custodian. My mom in the army. Now she's a nurse. My uncle's in the army now. I come from a group of folks that want to help others in need.
STEPHANIE: For Brandon's family, the idea of making a home involved giving back to the community. And for a long time, Brandon is on the same path. But then, he makes mistakes. The kind of mistakes that land him in prison.
BRANDON: I remember being in the bed on my bunk late at night crying like, Lord, what do I do? I felt ashamed. I felt terribleness to my family and to my friends, and I felt that I was a public nuisance.
STEPHANIE: He knows he’s disappointed everyone who loves him. And he knows he is facing two and a half years of prison time to make up for his mistakes. But then one day the prison counselor drops by. She’s been looking over his record. He’s pretty small-time. Nothing violent. Nothing really serious. So she makes him an offer.
BRANDON: And she said, Hey, you want to go to fire camp?
STEPHANIE: This is Home. Made. An original podcast by Rocket Mortgage about the meaning of home, and what it can teach us about ourselves and each other. I’m Stephanie Foo. In this episode, walking through fire, literally, to find where you belong.
STEPHANIE: Brandon Smith grew up in Altadena. A small town in LA County, where there’s a decent gang presence. But Brandon stayed out of trouble. He was a good kid – actually, kind of a nerd. Graduated third in his class.
BRANDON: And I ended up going to UC Berkeley.
STEPHANIE: Wow.
BRANDON: And folks have so many expectations like, “oh, now you're a Berkeley grad. What are you going to do with that? Are you hopping into politics? What are you going to do with that great degree?”
STEPHANIE: But he didn’t want to go into politics. He didn’t want to do much of anything. So he moved back into his grandparents house. And then he just… drifted.
BRANDON: What I call it is I was lost in the wilderness. I didn't have a sense of purpose in my life. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know who I wanted to be.
STEPHANIE: Was there any aspect of you that was feeling bad? Oh, everybody else in my family's a public servant. Should I be a public servant?
BRANDON: Right? Oh, no, definitely. I was just lost in myself.
STEPHANIE: Lost… and broke. So back before it was legal in California, he started selling weed.
BRANDON: One day I was driving myself and my friends and a few associates around, um, we got pulled over. The police searched the car, and they ended up finding an ounce of marijuana in my car.
STEPHANIE: Over the next few years, Brandon was busted again and again and again, for minor offenses - like violating his probation. But eventually, Brandon was sent to Wasco State Prison Reception Center. It’s at Wasco that he met the prison counselor, who asked – do you want to go to Fire Camp?
BRANDON: Now, at first I said, what is Fire Camp? She said, Fire Camp is a work release program where you all go out into the world every day and work and you go fight fires. So I said, okay. Um, no thank you. Thank you. But no thank you.
STEPHANIE: California’s inmate firefighter program dates back to the 1940s. Every year, thousands of volunteer prisoners are sent to camps all over the State. They’re teamed up with professional firefighters. They work together to control and manage wildfires however they can. But Brandon had no interest in fighting fires.
BRANDON: For me, the reason I said no is I remember as a child watching the movie Backdraft and that scaring the hell out of me. I remember that movie scared me so much, I had an aversion just to fire in general.
STEPHANIE: But once she left, all the other inmates told Brandon he was nuts.
BRANDON: Everybody on my tier was like, "What? Why did you say no? Why did you say no?" Then they're like, Bro, when you're at fire camp, think of, like, a summer camp in the woods. So there's no gun towers or barbed wires, right? And it's not a small cell. You sleeping in a cabin with like 10, 15 other people. And then they're like, man, the food there is so much better.
STEPHANIE: They went on and on and Brandon was like… damn. That actually sounds pretty sweet. I mean, yeah – he’d have to risk his life fighting fires. But they had a point - the food in Wasco was terrible.
BRANDON: I know some people that have an aversion to school lunches and they're like, oh my gosh, school lunch was so nasty. Imagine like that times a hundred.
STEPHANIE: Right.
BRANDON: So then the next day I ask for the counselor, and I said, you know what, ma'am? I do want to go to fire camp.
STEPHANIE: The first thing Brandon had to do was be trained to actually fight fires. There was an academic element, and physical training, to make sure he could go out there and lug around logs and equipment. It was kind of like boot camp.
BRANDON: I had to show that I could walk for miles, run for miles, a certain amount of pushups, sit up, squats, all that kind of stuff, pull-ups. It was a struggle for me. Because I had never been like a physical person.
STEPHANIE: Not a jock.
BRANDON: …right. I was not one of those people at all. My last time playing sports was in middle school. I was a football player and I sat on the bench the whole season cuz I was just, I was sorry, I, I couldn't do it.
STEPHANIE: After a few months of bulking, Brandon earned his certification. They sent him to the Bautista Conservation Camp. Half fire station, half mini-prison, Bautista is in Riverside County, about 90 minutes east of Los Angeles, and just down the road from the city of Hemet.
BRANDON: I had never experienced nature like that. Nighttime was really nighttime, you know, it was dark, you didn't hear cars up and down the freeway. Um, the smell of the pine trees and, um, you could hear the water in the creek and all that kind of stuff.
STEPHANIE: It was basically how the inmates at Wasco described it: like going to summer camp.
BRANDON: They had a workout room. They had a semi big screen TV, and we got to pick what we wanted to watch. The food was good. I had a real cheeseburger my first night, you know. I got to use the phone during allowed times. I could walk out and take a hike whenever I wanted to, if I wasn't working.
STEPHANIE: One of the nicest things about it was that, even though Brandon was technically incarcerated, at least in Fire Camp, he got to be so much less afraid.
BRANDON: I'm with a group of people and we've all been deemed, for lack of a better term, low level offenders. So I don't have to walk around worrying about getting into fights and confrontations because we’re all--
STEPHANIE: You guys are all small-time.
BRANDON: Right, we're all those folks!
STEPHANIE: So does that mean that you made friends?
BRANDON: Oh yeah, definitely. Some of them are my lifelong friends.
STEPHANIE: There wasn’t much fire activity at this point - it was December so, not wildfire season. In the meantime, Brandon and the other inmates were given other jobs to do - roadside cleaning, making sandbags, clearing brush. They spent time training, too. Like learning how to build a fire break. Which is a gap that acts like a barrier to slow down a wildfire. And if you’re going to learn how to build a fire break, you’re going to need a chainsaw. That was one thing he was afraid of.
BRANDON: I'll never forget, my captain had put a chainsaw in my hand and I'm like, “I don't want to use this chainsaw. This thing can cut your leg off.” That's the first thing they, they say is, “here's the chainsaw, just know this can cut your feet off or toe off or your leg.” I'm like, “what? I'm not about to use this.” But he helped me out and we would connect on, like, different techniques and how to be safe and how the best way to cut down trees.
STEPHANIE: I just like this idea of oh, here's all these hardened criminals, out in the forest, and you're like, I don't wanna use the chainsaw. It's scary.
BRANDON: Right? I was actually scared of that and I was even more scared of going on the fire. One of the biggest things I was hoping is like, please don't ever call me on a fire.
STEPHANIE: A month goes by without a fire. Then another, and another. It gave Brandon time to perfect his chainsaw skills. Life at fire camp fell into a routine. Cheeseburgers and cutting trees. Then Spring came around. And things started heating up.
BRANDON: I'm out there cutting and I hear on my radio, I hear an alert, um, like a “beep, beep, beep.” And when you hear that, like everybody stops what they're doing, because that's dispatch trying to get everybody's attention. So we turn the chainsaws off, they like “Crew One, Helicopter One, Dozer Engine One. There's been a fire reported. Go check it out and let us know what's going on.” Now I'm not on Crew One, I'm on Crew Two. So I'm like, “Lord, please. Don't, don't let it be nothing or let them go check it out and say they got it. It's something small. Get to it before it get big.” So I get back to working. About 45 minutes later, “beep, beep, beep.” Uhoh. Here we go. “Crew Two, Engine Two, Dozer Two, Helicopter Two. I need you all to go report to the Idyllwild incident.” I'm like, oh, now they put a name to it. Now it's a real fire. Like, oh, it's going down, so we pack up our tools, we hop into our crew cabbies, and we're headed up this mountain. We’re headed up to the city of Idyllwild. And we get there and my adrenaline just starts rushing. Bo-bo, bo-bo, bo-bo. My captain hits the rig. “Hey, come on crew, let's go.” So I hop out…and I swear to you it's like an Avengers movie. I swear, it's like when they defeated Thanos or something. You got people flying, you got people running around with chainsaws, you got dozers, big bulky dozers all over the place. You got firefighters with water hoses all over the place. And it's like, oh, we, let's go. No time to think or go be scared. And so we out there. Put on the gloves, had a radio on. The captain gives us the plan, I turn on my chainsaw. “Y y y, y, y, y, y” and here we go. I'm cutting down trees. I'm cutting down brush because I'm trying to create a fire break and everybody's following with me with their tools. We sweating., everybody's calling out, you know, safety and look out for the tree and where's the fire at? The fire's right there. And you know, like two to four foot flames, you know, just gushing at you with the wind and it gets hot.
STEPHANIE: Hot. And smokey. Brandon says he could barely see. All night long, he’d cut away and build fire breaks. Others would water the breaks to dampen them. He'd cut more. They'd water more. Non-stop. Finally, morning came and they had the fire under control. The risk to Idyllwild was gone.
BRANDON: And I'm like, oh my gosh, we are alive. We did it.
STEPHANIE: The crew was exhausted and covered head to toe in ash and dirt and grime. Brandon and everyone climbed into their trucks, and headed back to camp.
BRANDON: I'm just sitting back and as I'm sitting back, we're leaving the town, and there's all these people and all these kids with all these red, white and blue signs, you know, drawings of firefighters and they're all just sitting there on the road waving and saying thank you. And I'm like, man, they really do love these firefighters. And then my captain, he overheard me say that and he's like, “Well, just so you know, Smith --they call you by your last name-- just so you know, Smith, they thanking you too.” He like, “yeah, they, they already know you in incarcerated they already know what these orange suits are, but they still appreciate you in the work that you've done.”
STEPHANIE: How did that make you feel?
BRANDON: Oh it was an incredible feeling. It's a feeling of, you know, lifting your head up, poking your chest out, like, yeah, I did that. Like, I have walked around feeling like a nobody. And now was one of my proudest moments that I'd had. Like people are thanking me even because of my faults.
STEPHANIE: Seeing those kids gave him a sense of purpose – and of hope. Life wasn’t just about survival in prison anymore. He began to see potential for when he got home. For having a truly meaningful life. Fire season picked up after that. One fire after another. He stopped fearing his chainsaw. He even stopped fearing fire. Over the next two years, Brandon says he worked on over 30 wildfires, while serving out his sentence. And he loved it. He decided: this was his calling. He wanted to become a professional wildland firefighter. Backdraft be damned.
STEPHANIE: From the moment Brandon left prison, he was determined to land a firefighting job. He had the training, and he had the experience. This was gonna be a breeze.
BRANDON: So I started going to fire stations, dressed up. Here's my resume. Are you hiring? No sir, you're not qualified.
STEPHANIE: No one wanted to hire him. Over and over, he was told that he was not qualified, or he wasn’t experienced enough.
BRANDON: But it's like, are you saying my training was fake? Are you saying my experience is not experience because I was incarcerated?
STEPHANIE: In a way, they kind of were saying that. His criminal record was the problem. It was like a fire break -- separating him from the career he wanted.
BRANDON: And I just kept getting turned down, turned down, turned down for I think it was about 18 months.
STEPHANIE: Incarcerated firefighters make a huge impact, trying to save entire communities and forests. Their work is sorely needed now– last year, there were 7,600 wildfires across California. And when inmates are out actively fighting a fire, they’re paid $1-2 an hour. This program saves the State $100 million a year. All Brandon wanted was a job he already knew how to do, and to get paid a normal wage to do it.
BRANDON: And I remember talking to somebody, um, one of my buddies, and they were like, so I guess the only way, Brandon, if you want to be a firefighter again, is to go do a robbery. It wasn't the best of feelings.
STEPHANIE: What made those feelings worse was what was at stake. Home for him was a girlfriend, their young daughter, and a tiny apartment. He refused to fail them. Odd jobs helped pay their bills. But a career would build a future for his family. Finally, a friend from camp -- Royal Ramey -- reached out. He also got out of prison, and was also not finding a job. But he heard about a wildland firefighting certification program in San Bernardino County. They were accepting applicants. It was a little demeaning, because it would mean that they’d have to do their entire training over again, despite having years of experience. But if that’s what it took–that’s what they’d do.
BRANDON: Lo and behold, the first day in the academy, um, a chief spoke at the class and she said, if you all do well in this class, I will help you out to go become a firefighter. So right when she left, I ran out the door, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Pull it to the side. Hey, excuse me, chief. Hey, just so you know, I've been trying to do this for about 18 months. I don't think this works for me. She's like, why? I'm the chief. If I say it's gonna happen, it can happen. And I'm like, I'm formerly incarcerated. I've been in camp. She like, don't worry, I told you to graduate.
STEPHANIE: Brandon and Royal, naturally, finished top of their class. Of course they did. They already knew how to do everything. At the graduation ceremony, he spotted that chief again.
BRANDON: I look at her, she look at me, she smile. Afterwards, we go back out that same door. She say, “Hey, fill this application out and I want you to hand it directly to me next week. Not nobody else. Don't email it. Don't do nothing. Hand it to me.”
STEPHANIE: And that was it: They both got hired as seasonal firefighters. Once they got out in the field, the other firefighters were shocked.
BRANDON: They asking all these questions like, how'd you know all this about a chainsaw? How do you know this technique, how you got all this skill and you just got out of the academy? So I tell a couple of 'em, I've been in fire camp, they're like, like what? So I ended up hopping into the network of firefighters.
STEPHANIE: But Brandon’s story doesn’t quite end there. Because one day, both he and Royal joined a crew in Big Bear, just east of Los Angeles.
BRANDON: So semi-warm day, um, playing volleyball, um, near the lake. Firefighters in Southern California love to play volleyball.
STEPHANIE: Okay. Okay.
BRANDON: It's whatever, but random note. Um, and then all of a sudden we see this plume of smoke across the lake, and similar to before in my first call, beep, beep, beep.
STEPHANIE: They got to work.
BRANDON: We're in a whole bunch of mix of pine trees and deciduous trees. We're in a very, very high elevation, so the air is thin. Um, we're working for a couple of hours, tired. So during the break I hear somebody call my name Brandon. Brandon. And it's the crew from Hemet. They're like a couple hundred feet away.
STEPHANIE: Right there in front of them was the crew from Hemet. The inmates from the Bautista Conservation Camp, which he and Royal had been part of just a couple years ago.
BRANDON: We run over there. And I'm looking at all the folks in camp that are still incarcerated and they look very glossy eyed like in shock, amazement like, wait, what? What? Y'all did it? How did y'all do it?
STEPHANIE: How did they get out and become real, live firefighters? The legit kind? The PAID kind? Brandon was like, guys. Guys… I have all the answers. I can tell you, but not out here in the middle of a fire. He got clearance from his supervisors to speak to them at break.
BRANDON: So it's dinnertime. So now the correctional staff are there too. The lieutenants and all of the incarcerated folks. And it was so crazy because they gave me handshakes, hugs. One of 'em, um, uh, correctional officer. She came over and gave me a hug and she shed a tear. She was like, wow, look at y'all. And we're eating dinner with 'em, and they just unload the table with questions. So we start telling 'em all of our journeys and what we did, tips and tricks and what not to do. And then at the end we say this, we say, look, we gonna give the correctional staff and the captains our phone numbers. If y'all want to do this, when y'all come home, call us.
STEPHANIE: It wasn’t long after that before Brandon’s firefighter network helped him land a full-time job. At the same time, inmates were getting released, and Brandon was getting calls. One by one, he’d show them how to get training, how to try and get work. He knew how hard it could be once you got out, and he was determined to help as much as he could. Eventually, Brandon created The Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, along with his friend Royal. He actually spends most of his time doing that now, and less time fighting wildfires. Which, he misses. His program has helped over 160 former Fire Camp inmates find the kind of chances he didn’t have when he got out. There was this one guy, for example, who spent 12 years in prison, and some of that at Fire Camp. He needed a lot of help.
BRANDON: He's like, "Can I do this? I need something to change my life. I can't go back to the streets. So, the brother was determined. Our program started at, um, eight in the morning. He would be up at four thirty taking the bus and always be the first person there. He needed, health insurance, food, driver's license, mental health services. And then, we found resources, all that kind of stuff, right? And he graduated, at one of the highest levels like I did. And I remember like him being so proud. And afterwards his mom pulled me to the side and said like, thank you, thank you for also believing in my son. I always knew he had this in him.
STEPHANIE: Since Brandon’s journey from prisoner to professional firefighter, California passed a new law that helps fire camp volunteers find work after finishing their prison terms. Former inmates can now ask a judge to expunge their criminal records. This helps level the field, and gives them a better chance of getting hired as wildland firefighters. As of March, over 16-hundred inmates in California’s prison system were assigned to one of the State’s 35 Conservation Camps. Brandon’s program continues to help many of those former fire camp inmates find careers. They’ve stayed out of prison, and have rebuilt their lives. And he’s rebuilt his life, too. He’s married, two kids, and settled.
BRANDON: I've been blessed to move out of our apartment, and now I’m in a full-blown house with the garage and a backyard.
STEPHANIE: At a party a few months ago, Brandon’s mom – who, remember, served in the army -- she pulled him aside.
BRANDON: She said, I just want you to know, I'm so proud of you. You are a hero to me in all the work that you do, and thank you for your service. And I'm like, wait, mom, why you getting at me like that? I get at you like that every Veterans Day. Like, come on now.
STEPHANIE: But, he is proud of himself.
BRANDON: And like now I think I've found what my purpose in life is. It's like, no, I'm not a public nuisance. I'm actually a public servant now. Right? Because there was a time where I was lost in the wilderness and I didn't know my purpose or I didn't know my path or next step.
STEPHANIE: Ironically you were found in the wilderness.
BRANDON: Right, right. Ironically, I was found in the wilderness. That's interesting. I never thought about that. I was lost and found in the wilderness.
STEPHANIE: You’ve been listening to Home. Made. by Rocket Mortgage. My name is Stephanie Foo. You can reach us at rocketmortgage.com/homemade, or find a link in the show notes to this episode.
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