Inmates train for wildfire season at South Fork Forest Camp

More than 100 prisoners at the South Fork Forest Camp in the Tillamook State Forest trained with Oregon Department of Forestry instructors in May, putting 12 hand crews on call to dig fire line, lay hose and mop up hot spots on wildfires this summer. The camp, jointly run by ODF and the Oregon Department of Corrections for 75 years, sits in the middle of the state forest. Adults in custody there train over two classroom days and two hands-on field days. ODF instructors also trained 37 inmates from Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, which keeps three 10-person crews on rotation through fire season. This year marks 10 years of ODF and DOC training Coffee Creek crews together. "We've been looking forward to fire season all year," said Kelsie Martin, an inmate at Coffee Creek. "This will be my second-year volunteering for and going through the training. Nearly all the skills we learn here are transferable to life after we get out. It's not just the hands-on stuff either—we get to practice responsible leadership and team building. However, the main thing the training and actual firefighting gives us is meaning and purpose." Kyle Koonce, ODF's Santiam Unit permanent forest officer, coordinates training for the Coffee Creek crews at the department's Molalla office. "The crews are key to keeping our IA (initial attack) robust," Koonce said. "We typically have two-to-three engines respond to a fire start, then the hand crews come in and finish lining the fire helping to keep them small. This allows our engines to get back online ready for the next fire start." Hand crews also carry the load on what wildland firefighters call post-fire rehabilitation. "For a 15-acre fire we might have nearly a mile of hose out there," Koonce said. "These crews will spend a half to a whole day just emptying and rolling up fire hose. Again, this frees up critical resources like our engines to go after other fires." Prison crews do everything a typical contracted firefighting crew does, with one main restriction. "We only deploy within a 2-hour drive of the facility in Wilsonville," said Sgt. Patrick Forman, a Department of Corrections officer and certified crew boss. "We still operate under the same standards as any other crew with a 16-hour day, the difference is we may be travelling four hours." A South Fork Forest Camp transport vehicle on May 14, 2025. Photo: Chas Hundley That range covered the 2024 Lee Falls Fire, which forced the evacuation of Cherry Grove, a small community southwest of Forest Grove. "2024 was the first year I volunteered to be part of a crew," said Jody Warren, a Coffee Creek inmate back for her third fire season. "We went to the Lee Falls Fire and it was very emotional for me since I grew up in the area. It gave me a chance to give back to a community I took from. It gave me such purpose that now I want to pursue a career in firefighting when I get out in 10 months." Demand for the program outstrips its size: 110 women applied this year for 27 spots. "Many were not medically cleared, and some were not accepted to participate for other reasons," Forman said. "Otherwise, we might have nine or 10 crews instead of three." Crew members train year-round to stay fit for fire season. "Every weekend, we would do training and every weekend, no matter the weather, these women would choose not to sleep in, but to get out and get after it," said Forman, who along with Koonce has been with the program from the beginning. Training for the Coffee Creek crews runs 40 hours, with classroom mornings and hands-on afternoons: a tools and equipment day, a pumps and hose-lay day, a daylong chainsaw course, a day using the saws and a final field day that simulates a typical day on a fire. Inmates also complete the standard wildland fire courses S-130 (Wildland Firefighting), L-180 (Human Factors in the Wildland Fire Service) and S-190 (Introduction to Wildland Fire Behavior), which along with the weeklong training earns them a certification. Beyond Coffee Creek and South Fork, ODF's fire protection program deploys smaller numbers of what the agency calls Adults in Custody, or AIC, firefighters from the Santiam, Deer Ridge and Snake River correctional institutions and the Powder River Correctional Facility. "We have been prepositioning crews ahead of predicted severe weather events for several years," Koonce said. "This cuts down on response time and that allows us to spend more time with initial attack rather than travelling." Koonce said the programs give ODF more firefighting resources and give seasonal staff an early chance to lead and teach. "I know of at least eight former AIC that were part of the program that got jobs with firefighting contractors in just the last year," Forman said.