SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Located on the grounds of one of the world's largest women's prisons, there is a firehouse staffed entirely by incarcerated people. Firehouse 5 is home to a squad known as the Fire Girls. Journalist Anna Sussman has been reporting on the prison for 15 years.
ANNA SUSSMAN: And when I realized that due to the nature of prison towns, the women were put in the position of being the rescuers of their jailers, I wanted to hear as many stories and as many voices from that experience as I could.
DETROW: California's inmate fire program is 100 years old, but it has been in the news again because over 1,000 incarcerated people have been sent to fight the ongoing wildfires in Southern California. Anna Sussman's new podcast "Fire Escape" follows the story of one woman, Amika Mota, who learned to fight fires while serving a seven-year sentence for vehicular manslaughter. We talked with Sussman and Mota about the podcast.
So there's one moment in the podcast - Amika, you're fighting this out-of-control fire, and you feel like the fire captain is giving you dangerous orders. Can you set the scene for us? Can you tell us what was going on, what the captain was telling you to do?
AMIKA MOTA: Yes. It was a really large slough fire, which is a type of agricultural fire that we see often in the central valleys, and we were instructed by our captain to pull our hoses across active burn. And it was something that I was, you know, very aware that was not something we were supposed to do. And it was this - the complexity of our captain, who was also a correctional officer, giving us a direct order. So that was the situation. We were watching it unfold just knowing how unsafe it was, but we did initially proceed.
DETROW: Let's listen to that moment from the podcast.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "FIRE ESCAPE")
MOTA: The fire comes sweeping through. The fire kind of just, boom, there. And the trees caught the next trees, and it's coming across the bank. All of it is so fast. The hoses are drawn out across the slough. You know the girls are going to lose their equipment. So I'm thinking of the girls. I'm thinking about protecting the truck and our water source. I'm thinking about our [expletive] radios that we can't, like, communicate well on.
SUSSMAN: And then she tried again to radio the women behind the fire line.
MOTA: I answered to a correctional officer and a captain, but I also had people that I was responsible for. I had to just override this captain and do what was safest for the crew.
SUSSMAN: She called the women back from the front lines.
MOTA: I mean, the reality of, like, overriding a captain on a fire ground is that you could get sent back in. So, like, [expletive] the captain and what he's saying 'cause that [expletive] don't make no sense. And just as clearly and methodically and carefully as we can make decisions that will get us home safe, that's what that moment at the slough fire was.
DETROW: Amika, can you tell us more about that power dynamic? At one point in the podcast, you call it a bit of a dance. And it just seems like such a tricky thing to navigate.
MOTA: It is such a tricky thing to navigate. You know, we are in charge of our crews. You know, my first job was to make sure that everybody was safe. And it was difficult - right? - 'cause we often were answering to folks that, you know, we didn't always trust to be making the best decisions for us. You know, that was true inside of the prisons as well. So there is definitely this dynamic that we held as incarcerated people trying to figure out what our actual power was in a situation.
DETROW: Yeah.
MOTA: And, you know, so it was definitely something we navigated the whole time.
DETROW: I want to ask you both about this. And Anna, I want to start with you since you've been reporting on this so much. Like I said, so many people around the country are really learning about this program through the LA fires, and there's been a renewed round of criticism saying, you know, like, Amika, like you're talking about, there's a lack of individual agency to make decisions just due to the basic setup of it, right? It's incredibly dangerous work. Inmates only earn a few dollars a day. Anna, what do you make of all of that criticism and skepticism of the ethics of this program to begin with?
SUSSMAN: I think the criticism is healthy and well deserved. I think when it comes to the fire program, it's important to hold two truths at the same time, which is that it offers a lot of opportunity both to incarcerated folks and to the rest of us as a model for kind of what can be for incarcerated folks. And I think it's a really problematic program in which people put their lives on the line with no protections. So I think we can do better.
DETROW: Amika, what are your thoughts, having been in this position, on the pros and cons of this program?
MOTA: What I would never want to do is discount what it feels like in the moment to participate in that program because people are seeking something other than the horrific conditions that we are coming from inside those prison walls. So people are excited to get to the fire camp or get to the firehouse. They're excited to be out there and serving in the community. You know, and there's - that's some personal context. But if you zoom out a bit and look at the collective structure of the program and the way that we have commodified incarcerated bodies to support the labor force in California, it's extremely problematic. And we leave with very little. We don't have any wages that support us, and we - it is really difficult to transfer into these type of jobs when we're released.
DETROW: I want to listen to another moment from the podcast. There's a scene where the firefighters are responding to a car accident. Turns out the people in the crash are the daughter and granddaughter of one of the correctional officers at the prison. And Amika, you recognized this correctional officer, and early on the series, you called him a stickler. You said he wasn't abusive to you like other correctional officers or COs, but it was still somebody you tried to avoid. And on this scene of this accident, you have this complicated moment with him. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "FIRE ESCAPE")
MOTA: And the emotion coming from him, you know, to see his family being, you know, pretty injured and being life-flighted out - and for him to actually show those emotions in front of us was pretty intense, too, because they don't do that, right? It was his daughter and his granddaughter, and so he was in tears.
SUSSMAN: Did he become more of a human?
MOTA: Yeah - because you could maybe see expressions you wouldn't see on the inside, you know, seeing fear, seeing tears, seeing somebody in the place of being a caregiver and loving on their children. Like, we certainly don't see that piece on the inside.
SUSSMAN: After Amika and the firefighters got both mom and baby to safety, she picked up the metal wrappers and the bits of broken car and climbed back into the truck and headed to the prison. And she kept thinking about the CO in the green uniform.
MOTA: I felt like, I hope you know I loved your child just the way I would love my child. You know, I hope that they saw that in us. And it was like a strange and beautiful thing. You know, it was humanity.
SUSSMAN: But even in that fragile moment, this man was still her jailer.
DETROW: Amika, is there anything you want to add to the feelings that we heard you say about that particular moment and the broader dynamic that came up again and again on this job?
MOTA: I mean, what I would say is that, you know, in these moments of life or death situations, whether they're car accidents, fires, medical calls, we have - we've laid down our armor and the masks that we wear inside to protect ourselves as human beings on both sides, as incarcerated people and correctional officers. We're there to do the work, and the dynamic is hugely different than it is on the inside.
DETROW: That is Amika Mota along with Anna Sussman, talking about the new podcast "Fire Escape" from Snap Studios at KQED and Wondery. Thanks so much to both of you.
MOTA: Thanks for having us, Scott.
SUSSMAN: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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