Brandon Smith lost his Altadena home in the recent California wildfires — here’s what he had to say about what happened

Brandon Smith (Leading with Conviction™ 2020) is a California resident and the co-founder of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program (FFRP), a program that trains formerly incarcerated people to serve in fire fighting and prevention. His home and his grandparents’ family home were both lost recently in the Eaton fire. He took to Facebook Live to talk about what happened.

Watch the video:

As Brandon explains, FFRP graduates 100 people per year from its program, and currently has 20 trained people ready to get started working to address the wildfires in California, as well as do preventative work for the future. Unfortunately, due to collateral consequences faced by many formerly incarcerated people, it is extremely difficult to get work as a California firefighter — even if you’ve served as an incarcerated firefighter while in prison.

Nearly 1,000 currently incarcerated firefighters were put to work on battling the multiple blazes around the Los Angeles area, but their labor is often coerced and compensated very poorly — some getting paid as little as $5.80 per day for hours of dangerous and back-breaking work.

“I’ve gone through this for 13 years, so I’ve seen homes burned and lives lost,” said Smith. “And it’s different when it hits your home. … It’s terrible.”

Smith pointed out that firefighting resources that were specifically assigned to cover the historic Black community of Altadena, CA (626 area code), were redirected to the wealthier Palisades area, leaving many homes to just burn to the ground. “I’m praying for all the folks in the Palisades … I am sad that their homes are gone,” Smith said. “But you know, me and my family? We’re in the 626. We in Altadena. And the fire department wasn’t there. The resources weren’t there.”

“I’m also sad that it takes the Palisades fire,” Smith continued, “to bring attention to what’s going on with everybody else. … What? You know our whole city is burning?”

Smith credits an unusually strong Santa Ana wind season for the rapid spread of the wildfires. “All of us experienced a very different climate experience than we have in a long time. … These are the worst Santa Ana winds that folks have faced in like 50 to 60 years. … California is getting hotter and dryer. I don’t care if you call it climate change or a weather patter. It’s happening! Wildfires are continuously getting worse and worse and worse.”

“We gonna rebuild in the 626, I’m just gonna let you know that right now!” Smith concluded. “I just hope and wish that we can come together for a way to go create preventative measures so that these situations don’t have to happen.”