{"id":414101,"date":"2026-07-27T18:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T18:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/414101\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T18:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T18:15:08","slug":"2028-olympics-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/414101\/","title":{"rendered":"2028 Olympics survey"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

California prisons<\/a> are increasingly relying on an unusual fire alarm system: humans.<\/p>\n

Between 2020 and 2025, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spent nearly $50 million on \u201cfire watch\u201d staffing costs. In recent years, prison employees have spent roughly 270,000 hours monitoring for smoke or fire.<\/p>\n

They patrol prisons and visually inspect different areas during their shifts, according to job postings reviewed by CalMatters.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the majority of California\u2019s 31 prisons have deficient fire alarm systems and it would cost $1.5 billion to replace them all, according to the department\u2019s annual report<\/a> submitted in January.<\/p>\n

In the face of outdated, malfunctioning and inoperable fire alarm systems, the Office of the State Fire Marshal ordered the department to run fire watch coverage until it repairs or replaces its fire alarm systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis process has come at a significant expense to the department in staff costs for fire watch coverage,\u201d corrections officials wrote in a recent $15.2 million budget request<\/a> to support next year\u2019s coverage.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a drop in the bucket for the department\u2019s $14.6 billion budget, but costs continue to balloon.<\/p>\n

The department in June said it was on track to spend roughly $40 million for last year\u2019s fire watch coverage, according to the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office. That\u2019s roughly $25 million over its budgeted authority, the office said.<\/p>\n

Replacing a single prison\u2019s fire alarm system costs between $3 million and $87 million, according to estimates in the system\u2019s facilities master plan.<\/p>\n

Caitlin O\u2019Neil, who monitors the corrections budget as a principal fiscal and policy analyst at the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office, said the department has historically used correctional officers for fire coverage because the assignment requires keys and access to move about the prison freely. Their fire watch hours are typically coded to overtime.<\/p>\n

The base pay for an experienced correctional officer is $9,647 a month, according to a 2024 salary survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But O\u2019Neil said the department is exploring whether it can achieve fire watch coverage with a lower cost job classification \u2014 recognizing that correctional officers have more capabilities than just looking for fires. According to O\u2019Neil, the department is piloting a fire watch program at Solano State Prison. There, fire watch positions are classified as an \u201coffice assistant\u201d and report to a correctional sergeant.<\/p>\n

The pay for that position tops out at $4,357 a month, according to a job ad.<\/p>\n

Royal Ramey, a formerly incarcerated firefighter who co-founded the nonprofit organization Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, said fire safety inside correctional institutions is non-negotiable.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who are incarcerated, as well as the staff inside these facilities, deserve reliable systems and strong emergency protections that keep everyone safe,\u201d he said. \u201cIn situations involving fire emergency response, there can be no gaps in protection. But the priority must also remain protecting lives while continuing to advance permanent and reliable infrastructure solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Matt Cate, who was California\u2019s corrections secretary under former Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, said he was skeptical about the spending because people are paid to stand around and look for a problem that doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

\u201cLarge-scale fires in prisons are extremely rare because prisons are made of concrete and steel,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a fire department attached to each prison and there are people throughout the prison who are there all the time. It\u2019s staffed 24-7.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Cate, the state has \u201cvery strict\u201d regulations to manage fire risk in prisons. He said that puts the department in a position of either upgrading its fire alarm systems for hundreds of millions of dollars or requesting incremental cash each year to meet those regulations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little like deciding, do we buy the house or do we rent?\u201d Cate said. \u201cIt’s ultimately the governor’s office and the Legislature who have to decide how much to invest versus how much to plug the problem through adding additional staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kristen Cowan, who studies the impacts of extreme weather disasters in prisons and jails<\/a> as an assistant professor at the University of Buffalo, said she did not know it was legal for prisons to have inoperable fire alarm systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is baseline disaster preparedness,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s certainly concerning to know that that (technology) is missing. It makes you wonder what else is missing in the facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cowan said the department\u2019s reliance on fire watch positions in lieu of up-to-date technology could create big delays in fire detection, risking more injuries, deaths and detrimental health impacts from smoke exposure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t let anyone else live in a place that doesn\u2019t have a smoke detector,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. California prisons are increasingly relying on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-414101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}