THANK YOU!

(Content below provided by Alyson Dutch of BDPR)

It was only Friday January 15, 2010 when the community of Malibu learned of the possibility that 100 prisoners, part of the “Fire Suppression Team” program of California, would become their neighbors in a high density residential district with a school as soon as February 25.

According to neighbors who encountered a staff member of Fire Camp 8 on their daily walk, the long term incarcerated felons, displaced by the Mt. Gleason Station Fire of 2009, required living quarters and were scheduled to replace the fire crew long stationed at the facility on the top of Las Flores Canyon. The Camp 8 fire fighters were preparing to move to the San Fernando Valley.

The news spread quickly and not only inflamed a community who felt blindsided, but mobilized a voracious effort to retain their most precious local resource. After the devastating fire of 1993 and 2007 fire that miraculously stopped at Fire Camp 8, the goal of the community was to ensure their ultimate safety. The fire camp is home to one of the only two air fire crews that service Southern California and the only local first responder.

Only two working days later, while the warden of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation scouted the hilltop real estate location, the community was invited to hear the first proactive statement from the County of Los Angeles Fire Department at Station 70 from Assistant Fire Chief Gary Burden. Barely three hours had passed after the meeting culminated, when responses from Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky began to arrive in the email boxes of the hundreds of neighbors who had written complaining of this surprise prison camp installment. Yaroslavsky’s letters noted his “appreciation for the intense feeling that this proposal, and the manner in which it came to [the community’s] attention, [had] engendered.” He continued that “housing [these prisoners] in or adjacent to a residential neighborhood defies common sense.” Yaroslavsky apologized on behalf of the “County family for the manner in which this issue came to the attention of the community.” Finally, Yaroslavsky said, “The Fire Department will pursue other alternatives to the Camp 8 site.”

An attached memo from County of Los Angeles Fire Department Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman stated that he had conversations (that) morning with “Director Robert Taylor of the Probation Department regarding the placement of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation” and that he has “directed the Fire Department staff to cease the assessment of Camp 8 as a possible site for these crews.”

The community of Malibu would like to thank the Los Angeles County Department of Fire, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, Assistant Fire Chief Gary Burden, and Community Services Representative Maria Grycan for their extraordinarily quick response to the community and ultimate decision to retain one of its most precious resources.