Today on Snap Judgment, we're bringing you episode 5 of our Fire Escape series since the listeners are advised. On Christmas Eve, Amika and the incarcerated firefighting crew were called to a house fire and they found a home fully engulfed in smoke and made their way inside. It's like a haze. We, you know, we all are fully geared up, which means we've got our SCBAs, so we're breathing through our masks of air, right? So everything we see, it's smoky, it's hazy, it's dark, you know, the sounds are really muffled because we're all up in our gear. And yeah, visibility is not real good and obviously, like, you know, on a house fire, all the electric is out, so we're pretty much in the dark working with our lights. There were multiple crews on the scene. Amika's crew got to work removing the gifts from under the tree to save them from the water and the smoke. And as they were working, a corrections officer pulled into the driveway. It was his house. And he saw a bunch of incarcerated women removing Christmas gifts from his living room. Like kind of, I think he was shocked to see us pulling all of the presents out of the house and it felt like his first assumption was that we were doing something wrong. And so, you know, he kind of came with that energy, like, what are y'all doing? What's going on? What's happening? Like, why are you touching my shit? What, your house is unfair? We're trying to save your shit. The scene was kind of chaotic and also quiet. Amika says she watched the CEO try to piece it all together. He was watching us and what we were doing. And then he saw the pile of gifts and photos and that shifted him. You know, it was like, oh, you know, wow, thank you. You know. It was a big house fire. Everything was smoked out or wet. There is another crew working on the fire. You know, there's, I think, multiple engines on site at this time. And so it's actually, it is absolutely other crews that are working on hitting the fire on the roof, right? Where we are in the front just protecting property, basically. Well, you go through and we're doing kind of like a final sweep before we wrap up to head out. And, uh, and yeah, I mean, and we just do a walkthrough. We feel real good about everything. We've gotten all the gifts, like a lot of the electronics we knew were expensive, all that stuff. Because other firefighters were going to continue to hose it down? Mm-hmm. Staying on, staying on the work. And I don't know why that was. Usually we're the ones that stay the longest and do the most of the groundwork. And I don't know. I don't know why that happened. But we did, we did head out from there feeling like we had wrapped up. We'd done our job. Everything was clear. I remember being kind of hyped about it leaving because it felt like we're actually like saving property. And then it was a CO's house. Like it's not necessarily like pride for saving a CO's house, but there was just something about that dynamic. We had, we felt proud. We were, you know, we had done our best. We had kind of saved Christmas for this family. Um, and we were proud of ourselves. The firefighters drove home through the central California Christmas Eve night. They washed down the truck and went to sleep on the bunks that lined the walls of the bunk room. The next morning when they woke up, they heard the captain. He was on the phone inside his office. He was talking to the CO from the house they had tended to the night before. The CO cussed out our captain and was like, you ain't shit. This is a fake-ass fire department. My house rekindled. That night, after all the firefighters either went home or back to the prison, the fire at the CO's house had rekindled in the attic and the house kept burning. That's like a bad look for any fire department. There had been a few firefighting teams at the scene that night and another team had been responsible for putting out the flames. And so we were getting the blame for this fire reigniting, yet we weren't the ones up on the attic. The sentiment of the call was like, y'all fucked up, sloppy ass firefighters. Because we were the incarcerated firefighters that responded to the call, uh, that apparently were not good enough for this correctional officer. I knew there would be some people that knew who I was as a human being. And then there's going to be this other half of the population, I don't know, that just sees me as a piece of shit, you know, and just sees me as my crime. From Wondery and Snap Studios at KQED, I'm Anna Sussman and this is Firescape, the story of a woman whose world burned down, and then she learned to fight fire from behind bars. This is Episode 5, Release. Before she was incarcerated, before she was called an inmate, Amika was used to being someone who was endowed with trust, even more trust than your average free person because of her work. And when something unexpected happened in her work as a midwife, the family she worked with tended to see not evil or failure or a crime, but a natural part of life because of this level of trust she enjoyed. And there's a few bursts that come to mind. One of them was Baby D'Aneisha. So there was a couple we were working with and they were just like the sweetest. They came to every prenatal visit. She just would always be in kind of the full garb of... They were from a nearby traditional religious community. She always wore kind of the long skirts and little bonnet and just always covered up and modest. Just this really, really sweet couple. We knew that they lived on a farm. Oh, the other thing about this couple was that one thing that they really wanted was at their birth, they wanted us to be singing hymns. And I was like, shoot, I don't know any hymns. And at that point in my life, I was definitely not Christian. I was like, I didn't know any hymns for damn sure. But I was going to do it for sure, like fully respect them. I would always get down like that, like whatever families wanted I could do. And one of her very last prenatal visits, she came in with a clear water bottle and it looked like there was tea in her water. And we were asked her if she was drinking tea and she said, no, this is our well water. So that I remember kind of being a little taken aback by the color of their well water at that prenatal. But you know, just that was it. I just remember that moment. And they also really didn't want to do sonograms or any of the additional testing. When she would visit, Amika would listen to the baby's heart rate, measure the mother's belly. And when the mother went into labor, Amika and another midwife met her at a small wooden house. This was a little birth cottage on this woman's property. And so we were at their birth. When Danisha was born, her little head came out, could see her little face. And she was like looking up posterior baby. And then she slipped on out and she did not have arms or legs. She had like three little fingers on like her, her little hands looked like wings, but they were kind of, you know, attached right to like where her shoulder would be. And she also did not have legs. And so when she was born, it was a total shock to all of us. But Danisha was born in mama's arms. And we all busted out in a hymn at that moment. How great thou art. And it was crazy because I did not study those hymns, but I just knew every word that I had somehow. Then I remember the papa kind of looked at mama and kissed her. And it was like that music was taking that empty space of this shock and like, oh my God, is my child. You know, like everything that a mother is processing at this moment. Yeah, the room was just filled with us singing. And so I think it was, it carried her a little bit in that moment. So yeah, that's one of those ones I will never forget because it was a, because it was everything in one. It was the shock of, you know, just being with the family when they go through that. She was bound in a circle of trust, a circle she found herself in all the time as a midwife. And then when she was imprisoned, that circle disappeared. Amika and I talked about the concept of trust more than 40 times in our conversations, how almost impossible she felt it was to ever be trusted again. And then she found firefighting. Kind of me like embodying this firefighter persona and this whole like new version of me had a lot to do with that trust that was given to me inherently by anybody that we were responding on a call to, right? Like they looked to us to take care of them well and they trusted us. So it was very similar in some ways to that kind of, to what it was like to be a midwife. Amika had now been working as an incarcerated first responder for almost two years. And during her time in prison, during her time as an incarcerated firefighter, something was happening in California that impacted every firefighter. The US wildfire season is off to its worst start in a decade, especially out in California, where fires have already scorched three times more land. I just checked in with Cal Fire to take a look at the numbers and right now we are seeing more acreage burned. Apocalyptic fire scenes are appearing more and more across the West. A dangerous fire climate was getting worse and worse every year. Wildfires were breaking out all over the state. Forests were going up in flames. Entire towns were burning down. And the state of California was calling up hundreds of incarcerated people to help fight the fires. They rely on incarcerated firefighters to make up, you know, almost half of the labor force in California that is fighting wildland fires. I think it's between 30 and 40% of incarcerated firefighters that are actually on the front lines fighting those fires. And what are those firefighters doing? The most dangerous work of all. We're on the front lines cutting line or all up in the fire. Yet the most dangerous work. By using incarcerated firefighters, the state saves millions of dollars a year. The firefighters at station five didn't go out into the forests and stay at camps to fight wildfires. But they did respond to huge tinderfires that would break out in the valley. It's hot as hell in Chuchula. We didn't have a lot of rain. There was a lot of kind of easy tinder. And it was scary. The biggest fires were the slu fires. Those were often the ones that were just massive in the way they looked. And were also the hardest to contain. So a slu fire is a kind of agricultural wildfire. They ignite in the big ditches that crisscross California Central Valley. And one day when Amiko was lead engineer in charge of the engine and the hoses and the safety of her crew, she pulled up at what looked like a pretty big slu fire. She jumped down from the truck and started pulling hoses. I hope and pray my skills are good enough to get the job done. Like I hope I remember the pattern I need to spray my nozzle at when I hit this type of fire. A slu fire can then spread. You know, there's this surrounding kind of like wildland areas and farmland. And then you have the trees above. And so there's like so many different ways that it just could really, really spread. That's the nature of fire. You can't really, we're not in control of it. We're trying to control it, but we can't. We pulled up and the smoke, different fires have different smoke. You're trying to just figure out like what do you need to do and what do you need to do to help. This is Megan Peebles. She was a nozzle operator on Amiko's crew at this slu fire. I think that was my first time that I realized that things could change super drastically. The ditch itself was full of smoldering debris, but Amiko's firefighters had to cross the slu to some trees on the other side. So the captain, the correctional officer in charge of them, directed the women to lay their hoses across the hot ditch. I remember knowing that like that's a textbook no, no. We clearly have read in our training as firefighters, even incarcerated firefighters, just study these books to get on the truck. We know that's a textbook no, no. You don't bring your hoses across active burn. So it was like a red flag trigger. Like I knew, seemed a little bit off, right? I think I was still really new and I just was whatever they told me to do. I did. Amiko was hesitant to tell her team to put these hoses across the slu like her captain was telling her. She was getting close to her release date and she didn't want to make any trouble, but she knew this was a faulty order. Let go anywhere the story continues right after this break. This is our glass of this American life. Do you know our show? Okay, well, either way, I'm going to tell you about it. We make stories, old fashioned stories that hopefully pull you into the beginning with funny moments and feelings and people in surprising situations. And then you just want to find out what is going to happen and cannot stop listening. That's right. I'm talking about stories that make you miss appointments and ignore your loved ones. This American life every week wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Snap Judgment. This is fire escape. The story of a woman whose world burned down and then she learned to fight fire from behind bars. Amika was hesitant to tell her team to put these hoses across the slu like her captain was telling her. She was getting close to her release date and she didn't want to make any trouble, but she knew this was a faulty order. Flames are literally above the tree tops at this point. And this is your only defense against the flames is your hose. We knew that we were kind of being told to do something that didn't make sense, but we had to do it. It was our captain giving us orders. I think that all of us looked at it as for sure we don't have the authority to question a captain or the chief, but were we in the position to say anything? We are incarcerated individuals and it's not like we could go or do anything without our captain or chief with us. So Amika instructed her crew to pull the hoses across the hot embers. I could see all of this unfolding right in front of me and then the fire comes sweeping through. The fire kind of just boomed 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 slu. 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 shitty ass radios that we can't like communicate well on. And then Amika looks at the smoldering debris in the ditch and sees smoke and flame in the area of where the hoses have been drawn across the slu. She realizes the hoses are burning up. That means that my sisters and firefighters on the other side of the slu had now no protection. And so in the moment of like a captain that didn't know what he was doing and a dangerous situation like in all of that like all of the other shit kind of goes away and in the moment it's just about protecting our people. Like we have each other to protect each other. That's it. Because the hoses burnt up in the slu. I thought I understood how fire traveled and then I realized that I had no idea. The flames were they were over the fire truck for sure. I would say probably 50 to 100 hundred hundred feet. I was hearing different pieces of radio traffic and they were hearing different pieces but I'm screaming at them and hollering and you know like we're trying to get other firefighters to realize what just happened. And now there's fire coming towards the truck. I was like I'm losing vision. I cannot see the girls anymore. It's so spooky hot. You know we're in our wildland fire gear with just a bandana covering our mouth and goggles. And so but still that smoke seeps through the goggles in your bandana and you can barely breathe. Eyes pouring, snot pouring and then not seeing them anymore was so scary because there's not much you can do either and you know they're on the other side they have each other but I'm here and we can't hear each other anymore. We can't see each other anymore. Yeah and they shouldn't have been there in the first place. Then Amika saw the fire coming directly for the fire engine. I mean after we lost hoses and the fire was coming it was clearly headed towards the engine and you know our hoses are burned up now this is all we got which is the only thing that has water left on it and so it's literally like our lifeline. If we don't have our truck we have no water we have no defense. She climbed in the truck and tried to move it out of the path of the fire. To be rolling in that truck is our nicest fire engine on a fire that was kind of unheard of so it was a really big deal. And then she tried again to radio the women behind the fire line. I answered to a correctional officer and a captain but I also had people that I was responsible for. Being an engineer for a fire crew you're taking on the lives of four to five other people and you're directing them and telling them what to do. I had to just override this captain and do what was safest for the crew. She called the women back from the front lines. I mean the reality of overriding a captain on a fire ground is that you could get some back in. That's why she was an engineer. She had that ability to direct and see situations and take control of them. I mean I looked up to her for it. So like fuck the captain and what he's saying because that shit 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's what that moment at the slew fire was. So like informally we were in charge. It's this dance that I have danced the whole time I was incarcerated. Like we did it anyway in spite of all of the circumstances and the way things didn't line up for us. But we did it anyway. Amika and the women had gotten themselves and their trucks out of the line of the fire and also helped to stop the spread of the fire. Then they safely handed off to the next crew. We are at the back of the fire truck where we could sit on the kind of gate and we've stripped off half our gear. The gate right is a little too sweet and makes you sick but the water was the best. Yeah I mean there's nothing like that. It's just after a fire. We are covered in soot and ash. Eyes burning. Red. Nose pouring. Nothing kind of running from the smoke like your eyes and your nose. You want to follow her because you know that she's you know she's I would have followed her into any fire. We handled that call like bosses. We did. And you know all the labels we have addicts fucking I don't know like shitty mothers, criminals not worthy of being part of society kicked out of the world. That was who we were. But who we were that day is badasses. We were a badass team of female firefighters. They handled business. Nobody can touch it. Nobody can claim it. It's like that was ours. That's ours. When they got back to the fire station nobody said anything. No reports were filed because it would have made the captain look bad. They are not going to write up an area where they went wrong for sure and if they did it would not be in that that's not how it would get written up. So was that like a tacit acknowledgement that you all did the right thing and we're just going to keep moving? 100%. When the year countdown began to amica's freedom she started clicking off milestones. Her last birthday in prison her last Thanksgiving in prison as her release date drew closer. I knew it. It was March 15th. That date had been in my mind for years and creeping up to that date you're going through a million different things. When you were getting ready to be released were you scared about being alone out there? Yes. I mean well what I was mostly afraid about. I wouldn't say alone in a relationship context initially but it was I had lived with women. I had always had eight people in a cell with me or you know I always had people around me. I was worried about being lonely you know but there was a man that I was in love with right and he was incarcerated as well. His name was Jose and they had met before each of them went to prison. They had been writing back and forth the whole time she had been incarcerated. I think that the conversations that I really had with him like gearing up towards me coming home were really about telling him where I was at you know which is this is what I want for my future. This is what I want moving forward and I wasn't fully sure if he was there or not. I just was really skeptical because I feel like all of that it's like even on my end it's like jail talk. I mean you hear that all the time like you oh it's just jail talk right like you kind of don't know until you are out there living a real life with somebody to figure out what their priorities are. Yeah. That's interesting so part of you knew oh everybody thinks they're gonna be a certain person to get out and it might it might not be it might not work. Oh 100% because at the time it's like everything that I tell myself it's a story and it's from one lens and one perspective in this container of a cage it's literally that like you don't know until you're out there. But you knew you didn't know. I knew I didn't know and I knew that all the plans in the world like were just that they were just you know but I would face it all when I got home. His release date was a year later than hers. They didn't know what their life might look like together. There were so many unknowns but they knew they were gonna try to make it work and he was gonna call her as often as he could. But as she neared her release date all sorts of fears of living outside the wall started to creep in. The idea of who I had been before was like wiped out. It was wiped out and I actually you know like remember thinking about the crime scene and when you see pictures of the crime scene it's like my truck basically blown up with like my whole my family photo scattered across the ground like lost and it felt so symbolic because it was like that's literally like what happened. Like that moment wiped out everything before that. What are you hoping for in your relationship with your mom when you got home? I felt a lot more love for my mom than I had in the years previous. When I was in prison and when I was coming home. Over Amika's time in prison her mom Joanie had always year after year sent her articles about reentry brought her visitors who worked in criminal justice reform. She was laying the groundwork for her transition to the free world. Because my mom had showed up for me in a way that reminded me how much I love my mom and we had had a really hard like years and years of a really hard relationship. The plan was to live on the patio attached to her dad's garage until she got a job and she knew she was going to have to be a mom to three growing kids who she hadn't lived with for years. I also knew that they weren't going to trust me. You know that I would come home and that they were always going to be wondering if I was going to leave again or if I was going to get high again because I had two strikes. And so my kids were walking around this fear of like God forbid mom does something else and strikes out. The accident gave her two strikes gross bodily harm and manslaughter. A third strike would be a mandatory life sentence. My nine year old and my twelve year old are discussing these things like we have to leave this state because what if mom fucks up again. And so I think that I just had to get ready. I had to get ready for all of it. I think this one's from Blossom. And this was when all I was in the firehouse. This is 2012. Hi my beautiful mama. I miss you so much and I want you to come out already. I want to know exactly what you had for your birthday dinner and Thanksgiving dinner inside. I think we're going to see you in two weeks. When I was writing this letter I was listening to I'm Coming Home. Love Blossom. Thanks to play that song a lot. She'd been gone the better half of a decade and her release date was just a few months away. She had no career, no money, no house and she was terrified of being a mother to her soon to be thirteen year old. You know when I think about it what comes to mind is like all the things that we would talk about when she was inside. Like all of our plans that we had when she was going to get out. Like mom and daughter things, painting our nails together, going on trips together, watching movies, showing her music, listening to music together. I wanted a mom. But what happened when she came home I didn't expect that. Fire Escape is a production of Snap Studios and Wondry. This series was created, written and produced by me and assessment. And I want to thank Amika Moda for her help and generosity in sharing her story with us. For Snap Studios our senior story editors are Mark Ristich and Nancy Lopez. Marissa Dodge is our director of production. Original music by Renzo Gorio and Doug Stewart. Doug Stewart also created our theme song. Sound design and engineering by Miles Lassie. For Wondry our senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher. Our development producer is Eliza Mills. Claire Chambers, Lauren D and Mandy Gorenstein are our senior producers. And Sarah Mathis is our managing producer. Our executive producers for Snap Studios are Glenn Washington and Mark Ristich. Executive producers for Wondry are Marshall Louie, Morgan Jones, George Lavender and Jen Sargent. On Team Snap, the union represented producers, artists, editors and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians. Human Workers of America, AFL, CIO, Local 51. Firescape, the full six-part series is dropping weekly on the Snap Judgment feed. You can listen to wherever you get your podcasts and on our website snapjudgment.org.
