Inmate firefighters get home beyond Malibu

In a deal that will be welcome news to Malibu homeowners, the Los Angeles County Fire Department has struck a three-year agreement to house fire teams staffed with state prisoners at a juvenile probation camp in the Angeles National Forest.

The agreement ends the Fire Department’s search for a long-term home for the crews, a quest that sparked protests in mid-January when word leaked that a fire station in the Rambla Pacifico area of Malibu was being eyed as a possible replacement for a fire camp that burned during the Station Fire in August.

Angry neighbors complained that housing the inmates so close to their homes posed a safety risk. The residents also argued that with only one narrow street providing access, traffic from visiting inmate families would be a mess.

Within days of the uproar—some of it based on misinformation—the Fire Department announced it was scrapping the Malibu option.

Under the terms of the new agreement, about 90 state inmates whose fire camp on Mt. Gleason, known as Camp 16, was destroyed last summer will be housed at the Probation Department’s 30-year-old Camp Holton, in the Big Tujunga Canyon, east of Sylmar. The men already had been staying at the facility on a temporary basis since shortly after the fire, which killed two County firefighters.

“This long-term arrangement,” Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman said in a statement, “satisfies the immediate need of the Los Angeles County Fire Department and assures the residents of Los Angeles County that these crews will have an appropriate facility.”

Chief Probation Officer Robert Taylor added: “The overriding issue for both of us was the issue of public safety.”

The fire crews consist of state prison inmates with good behavior records who are serving time for non-violent crimes that include burglary, fraud and DUI offenses. Firefighting inmates have been housed at five locations throughout the county, including a facility for women in Malibu’s Encinal Canyon.

Freeman and Taylor came to terms Tuesday during a meeting at the Probation Department’s Downey offices. How much the Fire Department will pay probation has yet to be negotiated.

In interviews, Freeman and Taylor explained that the arrangement deal to house the inmate crews for a longer stint at the probation camp emerged only recently.

Freeman says his staff conducted preliminary searches at several locations around the county, “but the options were not panning out.” Among those was the Malibu location. Freeman says the department was only scouting potential sites—including the Malibu location—before he was going to approach the state and the community.

The agreement between Freeman and Taylor was reached after it became clear that no other location would work.