True Action: Fireboys
Smoke has a way of taking over all of your senses. The toxic smell will leave you scrunching your nose while the tears slowly fall from your eyes. With blurred vision, soon your touch is all that guides you until soon all you feel is the heat. The smoke washes over you and all you can think about is that last good breath you took. This is when the panic sets in.
6.2 million acres burned in California between 2018-2020 and 134 people lost their lives. Standing guard against the utter rampage of the fires that return each year are roughly 8,700 firefighters. Nearly half of those are prisoners living in fire camps. This is a snapshot of their story.
Synopsis: Directed by Jake Hochendoner and Drew Dickler, FIREBOYS tells the untold story of young men incarcerated in California who are offered a way out: by fighting wildfires.
- A way out: This isn’t an opportunity that exists for most juveniles locked away in detention centers across America. I call it an “opportunity” because that is exactly what it is; a chance for them to make good on something while at the same time earning back some of the humanity they lost. We really get a taste of that from the interviews with the young men who are a part of the program.
- Earning your paycheck: An average professional wildland firefighter for Cal Fire makes at least $20 per hour. The kids in the Pine Grove crew make between $2-$4 per hour while doing conservation work and an extra $1 per hour while working on a fire. Half of that money goes to paying any type of restitution they owe to the State or to any of the victims of their crimes and they get to pocket the rest. As you can see, it’s not a lot of money and anyone who has worked on a crew like this can tell you that these young men aren’t getting near enough for their efforts. It makes me wonder where all that money is going?
- Paying their debts: The kids all talk about what it feels like to become a felon. The shame and the embarrassment. The way their families spoke to them afterward and how they feel like they’ve failed their siblings as a role model. It’s one of the reasons that some of them have volunteered for this program. They want to have some sort of honorable thing to stand on. Something that not only gets them out of prison a little earlier but something that will make them better men.
- The feeling of appreciation: There is no doubt that seeing folks alongside the road holding signs and thanking you on the streets is a good feeling. Especially when your last contact with the “real world” was when the judge was handing down your sentence. These young men aren’t the best and the brightest but they are part of the American criminal justice system and seeing them accomplish something through their work in the firefighting program should give hope to anyone dealing with a similar situation.
- Finding a family: The kids talk mostly about girls, fires, and what they plan on doing when they get out. One thing that comes up in passing a lot is how most of the kids’ siblings or parents spent a considerable amount of time behind bars. It’s no surprise that some of them fell right into the same destructive behavior that they did.
- Returning to the world: No matter how good the program is at preparing these young men for some sort of life of service while incarcerated, it fails at preparing them for what is to come when they get their freedom. We follow one young man who had been in the program for four years and had seen nothing but success while doing it. Promoted to “First Man” of his crew and given the responsibility of having a dozen lives under his watch, nothing he did or learned could get him ready for when he returned to the world as a felon. Another lesson that the mistakes we make don’t just disappear after being released from a prison sentence. Wild fires are a good thing for the environment. They burn away all that unnecessary stuff in the forest and allow the new to grow in its place. For these young men, however, even the California fires couldn’t melt away that violent crime on their rap sheet.
The Verdict: Fireboys is an entertaining, educational, and powerful documentary about the path taken by a large segment of juvenile offenders in the state of California to get from an incarcerated felon to a hard-working, positive member of society. Thought provoking and, at times emotional, Fireboys shows us about the importance of family and home and how it isn’t always where you expect it to be. As a former social worker who worked specifically with juvenile delinquents, this documentary reiterates all I’ve seen about the power of forward progress in life and helping young people turn the page on their past and create a new future. The doc stays away from any preachy moments or touching on subjects like the fact that these kids are only making $3 or $4 dollars an hour while fighting fires, and instead lets us get to know the young men who have decided to take this leap and just why they did it. I fully endorse checking it out.
