An elite group of firefighters tramps through the forest. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources and Department of Corrections recruited these responders from a unique type of prison camp. These firefighting inmates learn the skills needed to help prevent and stop forest fires—and start a path to a new career.
Washington’s firefighting prison camp program provides the dozen or so inmates with training. That prepares them for firefighter jobs once they complete their sentences.
Kenyatta Bridges joined the Arcadia 20 group, or ARC 20, last year. At the time, he was serving a 10-year sentence for a 2014 shooting.
ARC 20 crew members learn how to conduct prescribed burns, handle dangerous equipment, and ensure that contained fires stay that way. When necessary, they go to the front lines of a fire, digging lines to reduce the risk a fire will spread.
“Team work, communications skills, an accountability for one’s actions and others as it relates to duties and providing for safety” are an integral part of their mindset, according to ARC 20 management.
“The fellas that I’ve worked shoulder to shoulder with, they’re amazing,” Bridges says. “We all made bad decisions in our life. Some of us got caught, some of us didn’t. But we learn from our mistakes.”
Many states across the American West have inmate firefighting crews. But Washington’s ARC 20 program is unique. ARC 20 recruits imprisoned individuals into a center where they build firefighting skills and prepare for life after release. Recruits also earn more than inmates in the state’s regular prison firefighting camps.
ARC 20’s crew superintendent Ben Hood is on the team that selects participants.
“We call it getting bit with the fire bug. . . . Once you get bit with it, you’re hooked in,” says Hood. “It becomes . . . more than just a job. It kind of becomes a lifestyle.”
When team members aren’t fighting fires, they live at Brownstone Reentry Center, a minimum security facility in downtown Spokane. Residents participate in work or training programs. They also get additional freedoms like wearing their own clothes or owning a cell phone.
Another crew of fully incarcerated individuals—with more restrictions than the ARC 20 crew—stays at Cedar Creek Corrections Center in Olympia. Last summer, the crew ran a mobile kitchen for almost 1,000 firefighters, who were fighting two of the 2023 season’s biggest fires in the state.
Timothy Bullock, a crew member at Cedar Creek, is an electrician jailed for assault. He wants to become a wildland firefighter.
He admits his actions “affected other people, people I cared about.” He says a prison sentence may have been necessary for him to change his path. “I just know that I’m never going to make those types of mistakes ever again.”
Bullock is a standout member of the Cedar Creek Corrections Center camp crew, say his bosses. He has submitted an application for ARC 20.
Washington’s program could be a model for state agencies across the United States, according to Roy Hardin, who helped form the crew with Hood.
“If [people are] employed, [have] a really good job right when they get out of prison, they’re not homeless, they’re probably not going to come back,” says Hardin. Four crew members from ARC 20 have gone on to take jobs as members of the state firefighting agency.
Now-former inmate Bridges is one of those. On June 3, he started fighting fires with DNR’s Arcadia Engine 7405 near Spokane. That’s one of the most wildfire prone areas of Washington state.
“He’s hard working. He’s motivated,” says Hood, who recruited Bridges. “He’s what you want in a firefighter.”
As for Bridges, he says, “I do believe one thing for sure: that people deserve a second chance.”
He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. — Micah 7:18
