For all the calm of that night on the mountain, putting out a wildfire is hard work. Crew members cut down brush and trees, trying to remove potential kindling for the fire. They dig containment lines in the soil to stop the fire’s progress just a few feet away from flames taller than some people.

On one fire, Mosley’s crew boss took a wrong turn while driving to the staging area where they would receive their location assignment. Mosley and his crew found themselves surrounded by fire on all four sides of the truck. Heat radiated in through the windows. Fire was all he could see. It felt apocalyptic, he said, like “hellfire and brimstone.”

Somehow, they navigated out of the fire and found the staging area. Mosley, 40, relied on his training. He followed instructions, listening to the voices yelling above the commotion as he dug the containment line just a few feet away from intense flames, side-by-side with people who hourly earned more than double the $9.72 he received per day.

The hill above was engulfed in fire as far as he could see. He watched for raining embers and wore his bandana over his mouth, attempting to keep the cleaner air in and the soot and ash out. The smell permeated everything. Fires away from structures, like this one, smell like a campfire. Fires that burn through structures, equipment or cars, Mosley said, smell noxious.

***

Chris Murphy, another incarcerated wildland firefighter, distinctly recalls the chaos of what he considers his first real experience of fire. It was just before the 2020 Labor Day fires began. He remembers the crew boss telling them to stay where they were — hold the line — and that the fire was coming their way. One of probably 100 firefighters from 10 different crews, standing in a line with 20 feet between each person, Murphy’s body began to thrum. “You just hear what sounds like thunder — not even thunder,” he said, “just a whole-body vibration of sound coming.” He realized it was a wall of fire heading toward him.

Helicopters circled overhead, carrying people with strobe lights deciding where to drop water. The heat was suffocating. It made him feel sick. Dust was getting into his throat. When he was desperate, he put his mouth next to the hose’s nozzle because right next to it was the only place without smoke, where there was clean air. When he occasionally had to use water instead of dirt to smother the fire, it instantly turned to steam and burned any uncovered skin. Everyone was screaming to move faster, faster, calling out where to go and when.

He could hear the chainsaws cutting down trees and brush, the shovels and Pulaskis — a tool used to both chop wood and break soil — digging into the dirt to reinforce the containment line. He could feel the weight of three gallons of water in his pack. He was going as quick as he could, while still methodically doing tasks as he’d been trained so he wouldn’t cause problems for himself or his crew later. He worried a tree would fall on him, even with someone assigned specifically to look out for that particular danger.

“Literally everything around us was on fire,” Murphy, 34, said. Despite the chaos, he said, “You feel alive, almost. I don’t know how to describe it. It was amazing. I loved it.”

Still, the work exhausted him. He left fires with ash in his ears, what felt like an adult version of a child with sand in their ears after a day at the beach. His nose had soot in it. It can take weeks for tissues and Q-tips to stop coming away black after a fire.

There is nothing like the terror of fighting wildfires. There’s also nothing like the adrenaline Murphy felt, the natural high that came from putting his life on the line and battling nature. At some point, the training kicks in and the process feels more natural.

Navigating questionable incentives

Murphy, Mosley, and another former incarcerated firefighter, Adam Gregg, all describe how hard they worked. But what they did wasn’t for the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC), at least not emotionally. They worked for their crew boss, their fellow crew members, the people whose communities they protected, their own desire to atone for their choices. But not for the DOC. Not for an entity that sometimes didn’t ensure they had a day off from hard manual labor. Not for the institution that profits off its fire contracts with the Department of Forestry while paying the people it claims to support and rehabilitate next to nothing. They all felt disposable, exploited. They felt like slave labor.

At the same time, all three are glad to have done it. They enjoyed the work and wouldn’t want the fire program to not exist. It helped them to reintegrate into their communities. But they also aren’t the ones receiving the main benefits of their work — that’s the Department of Corrections and Oregon residents. Their labor means less state money spent employing private contractors for the unglamorous, intense mop-up work that happens after a fire is mostly out, which is what incarcerated firefighters are usually doing during the fire season. The dichotomy between what the program claims to do and what participants actually experience is complicated and not quickly bridged, so it can be easy to gloss over. In the end, the program is simultaneously beneficial and exploitative.

Oregon Department of Corrections claims to ensure the program is voluntary. Thomas McLay, managerial overseer of the Wildland Fire Program, said participants can leave it whenever they want to. Further, program recruitment itself is simple, McLay said. They don’t push people to participate. “We make them aware of [the opportunity] and they fill out the application,” he explained.

On top of the ethical tensions of the fire program are important semantics. People who are incarcerated in Oregon’s prisons have been called adults in custody — AICs — since January of 2020 by the Department of Corrections. According to the department, the phrase recognizes their humanity more than calling them inmates or convicts. The Marshall Project surveyed formerly incarcerated people about what words they prefer and found that person-focused language, like someone who is incarcerated, was favored. While adult in custody may be better than inmate, the abbreviation AIC especially seems to undermine the point of using person-focused language like adult in custody. AIC becomes another way of separating incarcerated people from their individuality and humanity. Words matter, and those words help to define people’s experiences and perspectives.

There are seven criteria people must meet to be eligible for the fire program, including that they must be housed in a minimum-security facility, within five years of release, and cleared to go on work crews outside of prison. In addition, incarcerated people must be cleared by medical and behavioral health services, receive approval from their counselor and have a good conduct history from the institutions where they’ve been incarcerated. And, not surprisingly, they cannot be convicted of sex offense crimes or arson.