BHS – 8A – Inmate Firefighter Crews | ‘Medical News’ with Dr. Jim Keany

KFI investigative reporter Steve Gregory joins the Bill Handel Show to talk about California’s inmate firefighter crews dwindling. The inmate firefighter conversation continues with former firefighter Chuck Lovers who managed inmate firefighter crew for more than 20 years.  Dr. Jim Keany, Co-Director of the Emergency Room at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Medical News'! Dr. Keany talks with Bill about doctors seeing a spike in ‘heat related’ illnesses, the new Covid FLiRT variant, popular weight loss & diabetes meds, and The Plague in a human in Colorado.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listenings KFI AM six forty TheBill Handles Show on demand on the iHeartRadio
app. It is a Wednesday morning, July tenth. Hot Hot, Hot,
records being broken all over the country. Hate spell and let's not forget
Hurricane Berrel. I still think it'sgoing through at this point the Northeast.

(00:24):
Just tons of rain. It's justit's crazy. The weather is crazy.
Also, I want to remind youthat the Bill Handle Show podcast has started,
something I wanted to do for awhile, and every Tuesday and Thursday
it drops right after this show nineo'clock and the first one is up right
now at the iHeartRadio app and thewebsite the Bill Handle the Bill handleshowpodcast dot

(00:50):
com. Thank you for reminding aboutthat, Neil. So, the first
one is basically about how I gotto hear, and I've expanded if you've
heard part of it, I've expandedthat and it's a fascinating story. Not
that I had a whole lot todo with it, but you know,
my parents, my grandparents, theHolocaust, Brazil, all of that.

(01:12):
There's a lot to it. Soit's the on the iHeartRadio app, The
Bill Handles Show Podcast now it's timefor Steve Gregory. Steve is doing a
story or has done a story aboutfirefighter cruise that are dwindling even though we
need a lot more firefighters. Andthese are the inmate firefighter cruise which California

(01:34):
has had for a long time.Steve, good morning, Hey handle,
good morning. Okay, So comingup at a twenty Chuck Lovers, who
you know who is at cal Firerunning these crews for twenty years, is
going to join us and give thatpart of it. What's it like to
actually run these crews. But let'stalk about the story itself, Steve Sure

(01:57):
Sure, We're talking about inmate firethrough something very unique to California. California
the first state actually creating a programnot only on a state level but in
La County. So the California Departmentof Corrections and Rehabilitation, that's the agency
that oversees all the prisons, starteddoing this sort of California core of firefighters

(02:20):
from inmate crews. And these arelow level offenders and they're not eligible if
they've had any violent crime, anykind of sexual assaults or sexual related crimes
or drug crimes. Everyone else iseligible in certain criteria to go through an
actual wildfire training class, and theydo it on a state level, and
they do it in La County.And these fire crews have been crucial over

(02:43):
the years because these are young mentypically, and they are trained to do
what we call line cutting. They'rethe ones with the tools, the shovels
that go up right up to wherethe fire is at. They cut a
line around the designated area to tryto prevent the flame from jumping. So
that's that containment line that you hearhas talked about all the time, and

(03:05):
these crews have been very, veryvital to mitigating and preventing wildfires. Well,
going way back now to when legislationstarted underway that was reducing prison population,
then you had the pandemic. That'swhen lawmakers decided that prisoners were safer
outside of prison than inside of prison. So there were a lot of low

(03:29):
level offenders that were released or releasedon probation and parole. And then you
have more legislation, you hat Prop. Forty seven AB one oh nine.
You've got a number of different legislationsthat then put these low level offenders in
counting jails. So that wildfire trainingprogram started to dwindle excessively at one time,

(03:50):
there were more than four thousand innatefirefighters in the state of California.
Now it's less than half of that. And this is crucial because they helped
augment the regular fire crews. AndI'm assuming and Chuck is going to join
us in a few minutes. Thereare a lot of advantages to being on
these firefighting teams. I mean,prisoners are treated differently. They well coming

(04:15):
out it's a trained firefighter. Butthe problem is, does California we're talking
about county hiring full firefighters or joiningthe professional ranks. They can't do they
have Do I have that right?No? In some cases they cannot.
Now the legislation has changed over theyears on the federal level and the state

(04:38):
level and in some cases local jurisdictions. But if a firefighter goes through an
inmate firefighter goes through the complete programand graduates, they are a certified wildland
firefighter. They can get employment incertain circumstances. I know the Feds have
been working on that. Some localfire departments aren't comfortable with it yet,
but county wide, they're experimenting withit. On the federal side, they're

(05:01):
looking at them becoming part of federalfirefighter crews because they have gone through the
entire training program like any other wildlandfirefighter. I've gone to a number of
those graduations up at Pitches Dissension Center. That's where the La County Fire Department
does their training. I've witnessed thetraining firsthand what they go through. When
I've covered fires for many years.I see the inmate firefighters. They wear

(05:24):
the orange jumpsuits out in the field, and it's become a regular part of
firefighting in southern California. Hey,in terms of training, and they have
shovels beyond. Hey, here's ashovel dig over there. How extensive is
the training. Oh, it's exactsame training that any firefighter gets for wildland

(05:45):
fires. Now, these are notpeople that are trained to run into a
burning building or anything like that.These are specifically trained firefighters or innate firefighters
for wildland fires. So the typicalwildfires we see out in the you know,
in the rolling hills the mountains,they are trained for that type of
firefighting, and the exact same trainingis in the other seasonal wildland firefighter.

(06:08):
All Right, I appreciate it.Steve. Always always pleasure to have you
a board all right. I wantto follow that up with a friend of
mine, Chuck Lovers, who ranthese crews for years and years for La
County. Chuck, thank you forjoining us once again. Good morning.
Okay, oh do I have We'vetalked about this before, but following the

(06:31):
story about the crew's dwindling, andhe explained it's because there are there aren't
enough people who meet the criteria.And he talked about the training, and
I have a bunch of questions.What is the training like to fight wildfires?
Okay? Well, up in Sierrais where they do the training for

(06:53):
cal Fire, and the inmates comefrom there. It's already pre trained,
but we do have every spring gothrough our spring drills and reaffirm everything that
they have learned. And mostly itis designed for safety as Okay, it's
about fire shelters. It's more thanjust here's a shovel dig over there,

(07:15):
correct. All right? So nowthese are inmates that you ran. Tell
me about security telling it. Tellme about how they fit in with the
other regular fire crews and were theysegregated and how you dealt with them.
Okay. At the camp, weLa County used a lot of the old

(07:39):
Nike sites during the Cold War whenwe had these sites Ringing anyway, their
military establishment and they already become preyou know, they have dorms uh and
they had concertina wire then all theand and they're separated from the general public.
They're up in the mountains, sothey were inside the forest, and

(08:00):
we contracted with you for a serviceto maintain them, and we gave them
man hours to help offset the costof us being on their property. So
it's a cooperative agreement between the FEDS, the state for the inmate's use and
us. When they're on the fireline, are they separated from the civilian

(08:22):
crew. Nope, So they're alltogether right alongside any any paid crew.
And can you see who they are? Are they do? They have different
uniforms, clothing, little badges.I'm an inmate, I mean I'm not
serious, like like you've talked about. They wear orange and the typical firement

(08:46):
overs yellow. Right, And talkabout security on the fire line, Is
there any security or they can leavewhenever they want on the fire line.
Typically the officers back in base campwhen we when we come back to base
camp and they and they shower upand clean up and go to you know,

(09:07):
and have the same food that we'reeating. Uh. And then they
have they do have separate pacific areaswhere we uh, where they are sleeping.
And usually the various crews, theofficers that are associated with those crews,
they all get together and they isa cooperative agreement. A lot of
times we use uh fairgrounds for ourbase camps, and they already come with

(09:33):
with separate barn facilities and bathrooms andstuff like that. They're they're they're ready
made for a fire camp. Allright. So I'm assuming the training is
the same with these inmate fire crewsas if I were to I guess apply.
Uh. That's question number one.The other one is how much money
do they get paid relative to someonebeing hired on the outside. Okay,

(09:56):
their training is exactly the same.You. All revolves around safety, understanding
what's happening with fire, understanding howto protect yourself, and and understanding uh,
you know, when I give anorder to go somewhere, it's kind
of you've got to move down typeof thing. Uh. And as far
as their their pay, uh,they they get paid by the state depending

(10:20):
on what they do for me.I have a guy that actually rides up
front with me and he runs thecomputer because I you know, well,
and he's reading to me what's goingon. Uh, because I can't take
my eyes off the road when I'mdriving. Uh. And then I have
guys that run James saws, youknow, they have a different skill set.
And then there are guys that dodifferent things along the line and they

(10:43):
get different daily pay based on theirknowledge and what they're doing for me.
And on a fire uh, theymake a dollar an hour and that's that's
around the clock, as long asthey're assigned to it an incident and it
doesn't have to fire, it couldbe flood or anything else. Okay,
So a dollar an hour, andI'm assuming over eight hours it's a dollar

(11:07):
an hour, and if we're ontwenty four hours, it's a dollar an
hour. Do I have that right? That's correct? And they're paid around
the clock, so if we're outfor a week, whatever that amounts to,
that's what they make. And howmuch does I mean do you I
know you ran the fire cruise,the inmate fire cruise. If I apply

(11:28):
and I go through the training,what am I making on the line as
a fireman or an inmate? No, as a fireman? Okay? Well,
as a fireman. There's firemen,and then we do have hand crews
that are paid. Your kids havea desire to be firemen, and I
don't know exactly they're hourly wage.When I was doing it, when I

(11:52):
was nineteen years old, it wastwo dollars and twenty one cents an hour.
Now nowadays with a little inflation inthere, probably making upwards of you
know, maybe twenty dollars an hour. All right, fair enough, all
right, two more questions. Numberone, how many years did you do
this? I have a total ofthirty eight years fighting fire, but I

(12:13):
was a fireman. Also, Idid have you ever met a jew on
the fire line and a wildfire?Yes? Are involved with the corporate fraud
and of course I'm sorry, financialfraud. Okay, got it. And
by the way, Chuck, youlive in Las Vegas. What's the temperature

(12:35):
there right now? Well, wehit a high up one twenty a couple
of days ago. Now, yourexperience is your experience is a firefighter.
Did that help you deal with onehundred and twenty degree heat? Well?
Surprisingly, you know, we doput more clothes on, but it's one
of those things you just kind oflearned to live with you drink a lot
of water, and so you haveto be more vigilant of your crew,

(13:00):
you know, because you're responsible fortheir safety. You've got to you know,
take them in, do a joband bring them all back. So
I have to be more conscious tomake sure that they are drinking. All
right, Chuck, thank you,always appreciated. Take care Phil, All
right, check it out you allright. I'm known Chuck, as I
said, twenty five years, twentysix years, and boys, give me

(13:22):
story after story and what experience hehas. All right, Now, a
little bit of medical news that wedo on Wednesday with doctor Jim Keeney.
Jim having been a doctor for yeah, I don't know, one hundred and
twelve years or whatever, and aner doc but spends a lot of time
reading and so Jim, first ofall, good morning. Second of all,

(13:48):
I was just doing the story ofall of this heat going around and
what are you seeing in the ersand how big a deal is this?
You know, you got to rememberin housmuch Counter where we practice, the
temperature has been pretty good. Imean it got up to about seventy seven

(14:11):
degrees over the weekend, and thenyesterday we were back down to being like
overcast and in the mid seventies.So in our area, I can't say
that, you know, we're reallyseeing a lot of heat injury, although
you'd be surprised people don't realize itonce it gets into the high seventies and
the humidity is in the high seventiesor higher. Even that combination is enough

(14:33):
for people that are on medications orolder that have a reduced ability to sweat,
you know, they can get intoheat injury and heat illness trouble.
Okay, well, obviously you're awareof what's going on around the country.
Chuck just talked about Las Vegas atone hundred and twenty degrees Medically, what
happens to people at that temperature?Yeah, I mean basically, your your

(14:58):
body starts to cook, you know. I mean you have proteins, and
those proteins become just like an egg, right, and egg protein looks clear
and it changes nature right once youonce you cook it and fry it,
it turns white and it's no longer. You can't reverse that. You can't
change that back into a fresh egg. So that's exactly what happens to the

(15:20):
proteins in your body. They stopfunctioning. And as you get there,
the key proteins you know, inyour heart and your brain, those will
shut down and you can buy Imean, actually, heat injury is the
number one weather related death in theUnited States and in the world. Yeah,
far more than hurricanes, floods,any of the natural disasters. And

(15:41):
they call this a silent killer.Are you surprised? And how big a
deal do doctors make of this totry to get the public the government to
realize how dangerous heat is. Yeah, I mean a lot of people are
not aware that your local county emergencydisaster response usually involves opening up shelters during

(16:03):
times of heat waves. So youcan contact your county and find out where
those places are. So if youdon't have air conditioning or for whatever reason
you can't get to a cold place, those are available. And so the
government does have things set up tohelp protect people that are vulnerable because this
does disproportionately impact people of lower socioeconomicstatus because right, air conditioning, electricity

(16:27):
bills, all of that create aproblem. But yeah, it's this is
it's a big problem. It's somethingespecially if you have elderly people because they
have less sensation for that heat problem. Right, So you put and they're
less mobile. So you know,you put Granny out on the porch in

(16:47):
a wheelchair just to get her somefresh air right of the house. Yeah,
I get her. Get that.You get that heat humidity, and
they really can suffer and not reallysame much and the next thing you know
they're having there have altered mental status. That's kind of the key indicator that
you're in big trouble, right,you want to stop it before you get

(17:07):
there. When people are their heartrate is fast, or you know they're
they're just struggling to maintain their bodytemperature. But once they have altered mental
status, we call that heat strokeand that that's a very serious condition.
Yeah you've seen this, I'm assuming. Oh yeah, we do see it
all the time. I mean rightnow, I'd say, I just don't
want to try and represent that.We're seeing it along the coast here,

(17:30):
definitely. We have hospitals. Providencehas hospitals up in Oregon, and Oregon
is experiencing a huge heat wave.They had five deaths recently related to the
heat. And when we have I'mhaving zoom meetings with our fellow hospitals across
the country and the people from Portlandare saying that it's pretty brutal up there
right now, Okay, just beforewe went to break, who's going to

(17:55):
ask you and I am going toask you about one of my favorite diseases,
and that is the plague. Andunfortunately it's been a few hundred years
since it really weird. It's uglyhead. I thought the plague didn't happen
in people anymore. What's going onnow? The plague is just a lot
less exciting because of abiotics. Soit's one of the rare, you know,

(18:18):
outbreaks and epidemics that was a Itwas bacteria rather than a virus,
and so once we developed antibiotics,we could just kill the bacteria. It
just really isn't as exciting as itused to be. So plague is what
they call zoonotic disease like as inthe word zoo like. It gets transmitted
from animal to humans, usually througha flee So the flea bites your cat,

(18:41):
and then that flea bites you,and then you can get the plague
and it enters the body right throughthat bite. It travels to like a
lymph node, and that lymph nodegets massive, and that's what they call
it. Bubau. So that's that'swhere the word bubonic plague comes from.
But nowadays, I mean it isdeadly. It definitely is deadly. If
it's diagnosed correctly and treated, youcan die from it. But we have

(19:03):
antibiotics to treat it, so it'spretty easy to treat once it's recognized.
Okay, recognizing it, I meanthat is you know, the plague is
kind of weird. I mean,it's just not one of those things that
you see every day. I'm assumingand we talk about the bubols. Those
are the postules, the open pussy, superating, disgusting sores that you get.

(19:26):
Do I have that right? No, the buboats can break open,
but that typically they don't. Soit's usually it's like you know when you
feel lymph nodes in your neck whenyou have infection. You have those everywhere
your armpit. You're growing lots ofdifferent places, and so if you get
bits, say on your arm,then the lymph nodes in your armpit will

(19:51):
swell up massively and so much sothat you won't miss them, and then
you can point them out to thedoctor. The doctor field and goes,
wow, that's big. So thenwe can put a needle in that and
drain some of the puss out ofit, send it to the lab,
and that's what will diagnose pewbonic plague. It stein nearly as exciting as it
used to be. And when ittook out a third of Europe exactly,

(20:12):
and it went on for years,Yeah, and it came back to a
bunch of times too. Pretty excitingstuff, all right. Now, Something
that really does affect a whole lotof people is I understand there's a new
COVID variant and we're not paying attentionto COVID very much and should we.

(20:33):
Well, I mean it's kind ofpart of the background noise now, and
as tired as I am of COVID, you know, the problem isn't still
here. So you know, asmuch as I'd love to ignore it,
you really can't. It's a groupnow of these they call it FLIRT variants,
and it's a group of three orfour different ones that make up about
fifty to sixty percent of the cases. And I think the problem now is

(20:57):
the assumption is everybody's saying that asyou get more and more COVID infections,
it gets milder each time. Andyou know, somebody who's had it seven
times. I can tell you that'snot true, is that I think number
three was it was bad, andlike number five was really bad. And
you know, so they don't necessarilyget easier every time you get it,

(21:22):
and so it's still something serious.Then it can hospitalize you and something to
try and avoid if you can.You've had it seven times, yeah,
I've had it seven times. Okay, But I'm assuming you didn't get it
the first time around when it startedgoing and people weren't going to the hospital
and dying on a regular basis.Well, I don't know, because you

(21:42):
know, right the thing I mean, if they did, it wasn't a
severe case because you know, weall went through that season having what looked
like mild flu like illnesses from timeto time, and we didn't remember we
didn't have testing available, right,so during that first part we didn't have
any testing. I mean, Iknow I didn't get it when we were
down in Miramar and we were takingcare of the cruise ship people because you

(22:06):
know, if you got any everyday we were tested for fever and if
you had any signs, you know, we toss those people back out into
quarantine. And that really sucked,right because you volunteered to go do this
thing, and now you're stuck inquarantine for two weeks until you can return
home. But so, no,I didn't get in the early stages.

(22:26):
But since then, you know,four boosters and seven infections for me,
it's just not working very well.If a booster comes out, are you
taking it? You know, I'vetalked again. This is all like individual
decision. I still think that thevaccines are a good idea overall, but

(22:47):
after talking to our infectious disease specialist, he said, look, you know,
this thing is obviously not helping youmuch, so I don't know that
it's necessarily has much value for youat this point. Yeah. I remember
talking about COVID when you were workingoff the cruise ship, and since there's
a lot of elderly people on cruiseships, people were dying left and right.
I mean you were taking them outand they would die. Yeah.

(23:10):
Yeah, that's when we first kindof realized that maybe putting people on a
ventilator wasn't good. Because I hada ninety year old guy that I thought
for sure was not going to makeit, and he refused to be put
on a ventilator because he had anadvanced directive for his end of life,
you know, kind of wishes,and he survived. And meanwhile, there
were forty and fifty year old peoplethat were their oxygen level was going extremely

(23:33):
low, so they ended up ona ventilator and they died. All right,
Jim, Always I love finishing upour conversations about people dying. That's
just one of the things we do. I know you do. Yeah,
Jim, I'll catch you next week. Take care, thank you, Take
care. All right. We're atthe end of the show, and I
want to remind you that now Mondaysand Wednesdays, I am taking phone calls

(23:56):
for handle on the law and givingyou margin legal advice. And this is
off the air, and you cancall me at eight seven seven five two
zero eleven fifty eight seven seven fivetwo zero eleven fifty starting in just a
moment as I walk out. Andyou're not waiting very long because I'm zipping

(24:17):
through these phone calls. There areno breaks. I'll do this for about
half an hour, and I haveno patience. Put all that together,
and I go through phone calls prettyquickly. Eight seven seven five two zero
eleven fifty. Back again tomorrow.Amy starts at five am with wake up
call. Neil and I are herefrom six to right about now, and

(24:40):
then Crono and oh Ann's on vacation, so it's Michelle's back, so we'll
catch everybody tomorrow. This is kfI Am six forty Live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app. You've been listening tothe Bill Handle Show. Catch my show
Monday through Friday, six am tonine am, and anytime on demand the iHeartRadio app