Sierra Conservation Camp #30 [Archive]

PT ROSE

02-23-2007, 11:41 AM

PT Rose,

Is this the same as SCC. Do you know what camp#30 is for? Do you have a loved one there??? I was hoping someone here also had a loved one there. Thank you for the reply! Nicole

No, it's not SCC, It's a Fire Camp.(Conservation Camp) It's close to SCC, it's the "Mother" Camp.
They do training at SCC for fire camp, they go to fire camp after they have passed all tests.
My son was in Antelope Fire Camp.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF)
Conservation Camp Program
COOPERATIVE PROGRAM
CDF is currently authorized to operate 41 Conservation Camps statewide that house nearly
4,000 inmates and wards. These camps are operated in conjunction with the California
Department of Corrections (CDC) and the California Youth Authority (CYA). Through these
cooperative efforts CDF is authorized to operate 198 fire crews year round. These crews are
available to respond to all types of emergencies including wildfires, floods, search and rescues,
and earthquakes. When not responding to emergencies, the crews are busy with conservation and
community service work projects for state, federal, and local government agencies. Fire crews
perform several million hours of emergency response each year and more on work projects.
FIRE CREWS
California’s Conservation Camp Program fire crews, also known as hand crews, provide the
muscle that enables CDF to achieve the Department’s mission. A primary objective within that
mission is to “reduce life, property, and natural resource losses through the implementation of
balanced fire prevention, fire protection planning, presuppression, and suppression activities.”
Fire crews make up the platoons of foot soldiers on the “front line” day and night, when California
experiences one of its many natural or human caused disasters, or one of its burgeoning number
of minor emergencies that occur on a daily basis. The crews are completely mobile throughout the
state and are strategically located in areas that are most likely to need their assistance.
These fire crews are highly trained and motivated, well organized within each crew unit, well
supervised by permanently assigned personnel, and well cared for by the custodial agency
responsible for their health and welfare. They are carefully screened by these custodial agencies
for their suitability for the program, including physical, emotional, and intellectual aptitudes, as
well as a lack of arson in their records. Potential crew members are evaluated again during physi-
cal fitness training by the custodial agency and yet again during their basic training by CDF. Fire
Crew Firefighter Basic Training consists of a week of classroom training and a week of field
training and covers wildland fire safety and attack, hand tool
use, teamwork, and crew expectations. Once assigned to a fire
crew, a minimum of four hours-per-week of advanced training is
provided to each fire crew firefighter, with some members pro-
gressing to more responsible positions on the crew.
EMERGENCY ACTIVITIES
All CDF fire crews are tested each spring during Fire Crew
Preparedness Exercises. These exercises consist of several
wildland fire fighting evolutions, stressing teamwork and safety.
They also take on a certain air of competition. Basic prepared-
ness exercises include: equipment readiness, knowledge of fire
fighting and safety principles, physical condition, teamwork, and
conduct. By the end of their day of evaluations, crewmembers
have been thoroughly inspected, along with their crew-carrying
vehicle. They have hiked four miles in 65 minutes with full gear
and tools, have cut 100 yards of fire line through brush, some
have extended 1,000 feet of progressive hose lay, and many have
constructed a safety zone and deployed a fire shelter. Some
exercises include working with live fire, helicopters, bulldozers, and other emergency related
activities.
CDF fire crews are available year-round; consequently, they have become California’s storm
troopers, logging some 426,090 hours of flood fighting in January of 1997 alone. During a destruc-
tive fire season fire crews are in such high demand that their availability is often critically low
and, at times, non-existent. All of California’s major disasters over the last few years have seen
the assistance of the fire crews in either a labor intensive effort to contain and mitigate the
situation, such as the fires, heavy snows, search and rescue operations, earthquakes and floods,
or in more of a support role, such as staffing a mobile kitchen unit during the Los Angeles riots.
On fires, building “freeways” with chain saws and hand tools through whatever vegetation happens
to be in the line of fire is normal crew routine. However, direct attack, where the crew’s efforts are
applied directly to the flaming front of the fire, is the tactic of choice when the distance between the
wildfire, and life and property grows smaller. You will also see these crews ahead of the fire setting
up to protect structures. They may conduct “firing out” operations as the main fire approaches,
burning from a control line or the defensible space around structures toward the wildfire, consum-
ing the brush and other vegetation between their position and the wildfire. This tactic increases the
defensible space that the crewmembers must inhabit during the assault by the wildfire. After the
fire front passes, they will then extinguish any small fires that have ignited on or around the
structures before moving on to their next assignment. Other fire crew activities one can witness, if
they venture away from the pavement, are hot-spotting, or attacking faster burning or particularly
threatening areas of the fire, providing support for air attack operations, extending hose lays,
mop-up, and patrol. All this for $1 per hour of emergency pay.
CALIFORNIA BENEFITS
The citizens of California reap a significant fiscal benefit by housing their low risk inmates and
wards in the conservation camps. Many of the inmates and wards receive a new lease on life at
camp where they learn honest skills and work ethics that will serve them well after their prison
stay. Another taxpayer benefit is the labor these “campers” provide for conservation related projects.
Basically, this is free labor, with Fire Crew Captain supervision, for work projects that would not
otherwise be affordable for many government agencies. CDF is careful not to compete with, or
displace, private enterprise in the approval, scheduling, and execution of these jobs.
Conservation camps provide community services and a source of income to many small communi-
ties and sparsely populated areas in rural California. A typical conservation camp will be located
within a few miles of a small population center. It will have a civil service staff of at least 24
employees, between CDF and the cooperating agency, and will field five fire crews. The budget
for a typical camp, including both agencies’ payroll and operating costs, is about $2.35
million. Many of the goods and services required for operation of the conservation camp will be
purchased from local vendors, and it is common for staff to be active, involved members of the local
community.
CDF values and appreciates the cooperation of the Department of Corrections, and the
Department of the Youth Authority. Without their commitment and dedication to the program,
Californians would not be enjoying these social, economic, environmental, and aesthetic benefits.