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Surprised there doesn't appear to be a wildlands firefighter reserves program where normal people are trained to firefighting skills and then have a refresher course for a week before sticking us in the flames.

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California would rather use inmates as an almost-free resource to fight fires. Works even better than volunteer force.

Only this time, the inmates were already released because of COVID-19.

I hope it's not lost on people the fact that we essentially have a population of slaves bound to risk their lives protecting wealth and property they can't partake in and that probably shouldn't be situated, geographically, where it is in the first place. Also note that they're on work release, so it's unlikely that these people are particularly notorious criminals. They're (mostly) men who made mistakes and had their freedom stripped away profoundly for it. That's the state/region that birthed the Information Age and all its "progress."

Hopefully some will take that policy into account next Tuesday.

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