By Mad­die Vin­cent, The Aspen Times via AP

ASPEN, Colo. — A loud, dis­tant hum rever­ber­at­ed from a tree stand neigh­bor­ing sev­er­al Snow­mass homes on a recent morning.

Sev­er­al dead brush and branch piles could be seen neat­ly stacked among the small patch of trees from the vil­lage road­way. Trunks were bare of their low­er branch­es. And up a hill in the stand between two homes, dead trees were being cleared out and pushed through a wood chip­per machine, chopped into tiny pieces spread back over the tree stand floor as mulch.

“Clean­ing out the debris and dead trees helps reduce poten­tial wild­fire fuels and pro­tects the hous­es around here,” said John Mele, Roar­ing Fork Fire Res­cue Author­i­ty fire mar­shal, as he walked around the work area.

Every year, the town of Snow­mass Vil­lage, local home­own­ers asso­ci­a­tions and Roar­ing Fork Fire Res­cue offi­cials get togeth­er and pin­point areas of town that need to be cleared of dead tree and brush, Mele said. He explained that this col­lab­o­ra­tive effort to annu­al­ly remove for­est debris aims to help make Snow­mass homes and struc­tures more defen­si­ble if a wild­fire were to ignite.

Mele also explained that this main­ly neigh­bor­hood-cen­tric, “nit­ty-grit­ty” wild­fire mit­i­ga­tion work isn’t usu­al­ly head­ed by Roar­ing Fork Res­cue staff — it’s led by the Rifle Cor­rec­tion­al Center’s State Wild­land Inmate Fire Team (SWIFT), which has been hired to offer its exper­tise and cost-effec­tive ser­vices to Snow­mass Vil­lage for rough­ly a decade.

But after this sea­son, the Rifle inmate hand crew will no longer car­ry out wild­fire mit­i­ga­tion projects in Snow­mass or the oth­er Roar­ing Fork Val­ley com­mu­ni­ties it reg­u­lar­ly works with. The state is set to dis­solve it as part of a busi­ness reor­ga­ni­za­tion of the Col­orado Cor­rec­tion­al Indus­tries (CCI) inmate job skills pro­grams across the state.

“We work with these guys because it’s cost effec­tive but also because they’re an actu­al wild­fire hand crew and have the skills and expe­ri­ence with this,” Mele said. He went on to say the crew has been great to work with over the years and a valu­able asset to Snow­mass Vil­lage. After this year, town part­ners will have to “explore all of its options” to con­tin­ue the same qual­i­ty of annu­al mit­i­ga­tion work, he said.

The Rifle SWIFT team is one of three in the state that has been help­ing both pro­vide hand crew assis­tance and sup­port on state wild­fires and car­ry out wild­fire mit­i­ga­tion and woods-relat­ed projects for near­ly 20 years.

Accord­ing to CCI’s 2019 annu­al report, offend­ers part of the SWIFT crews put in 13,200 man hours fight­ing wild­fires and con­duct­ing oth­er for­est and fire-relat­ed projects, respond­ing to eight fires total.

CCI pro­grams aim to pre­pare inmates for suc­cess­ful employ­ment upon release from prison by offer­ing super­vised work­force and skills-build­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties across a mul­ti­tude of fields, its web­site says. CCI offers some com­pen­sa­tion for inmate labor as part of its pro­gram­ming, rang­ing from 86 cents to $2.49 per day for full-time assign­ments and start­ing at 43 cents per day for half-time assign­ments, accord­ing to Col­orado Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions documents.

At the Rifle Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­ter, inmates can take part in culi­nary arts, trails and SWIFT pro­grams, CCI’s 2019 annu­al report says. But after this fire sea­son, Rifle’s SWIFT pro­gram will be decom­mis­sioned as part of a CCI “reor­ga­ni­za­tion” effort to “ensure that (CCI) can con­tin­ue to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for inmates to learn mar­ketable job skills” and “allow CCI to focus on oppor­tu­ni­ties and indus­tries that are con­sis­tent with mod­ern work­force pro­jec­tions and allow it to be able to rein­vest in the areas of infra­struc­ture, equip­ment, etc.,” accord­ing to an email from Annie Skin­ner, pub­lic infor­ma­tion offi­cer with the Col­orado Depart­ment of Corrections.

As of ear­ly August, Skin­ner said there were no plans to add any addi­tion­al CCI pro­gram­ming in Rifle or to decom­mis­sion the Canon City and Bue­na Vista SWIFT pro­grams. She also said the COVID-19 cri­sis is not specif­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed to the Rifle SWIFT pro­gram dissolving.

“The oper­a­tional deci­sions CCI is mak­ing relat­ing to the reor­ga­ni­za­tion are due to staffing needs, prof­itabil­i­ty his­to­ry and pro­jec­tions, and work­force and infra­struc­ture con­sid­er­a­tions,” Skin­ner said via email. “As part of this reor­ga­ni­za­tion, sev­er­al CCI pro­grams will be reduced in size, oth­ers will be decom­mis­sioned, and some will be absorbed into oth­er divisions.”

For Todd Sny­der, crew boss of Rifle’s inmate fire team, he doesn’t under­stand exact­ly why Rifle’s SWIFT pro­gram is being dis­solved but will con­tin­ue train­ing inmates through the Bue­na Vista pro­gram start­ing next season.

As he super­vised the mit­i­ga­tion work tak­ing place in Snow­mass last week, Sny­der said he’s stayed in touch with a lot of inmates he’s helped train in wild­land fire­fight­ing over the past 20 years who have gone on to work suc­cess­ful careers in the field once released from prison.

One of those peo­ple is Michael Mor­gan, who was a part of the Rifle SWIFT pro­gram for two years and is now an engine boss for the state of Oregon.

Mor­gan said the Rifle SWIFT pro­gram “pret­ty much changed my life,” show­ing him a path to suc­cess once he was released from prison.

“There aren’t a lot of options for peo­ple with felonies to make mon­ey once they get out of prison, but this is one of them,” Mor­gan said in a phone inter­view with The Aspen Times. “(Being a part of the SWIFT pro­gram) showed me I could work and push myself a hell of a lot fur­ther than I ever thought and that I could live a nor­mal life.”

Now as an engine boss help­ing fight wild­land fire in Ore­gon, Mor­gan said he often super­vis­es inmate hand crews, which he says has been an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence because he’s help­ing peo­ple who are in shoes sim­i­lar to the ones he used to be in.

Mor­gan said he was upset when he found out about the Rifle SWIFT pro­gram being decom­mis­sioned, as he feels it’s the best SWIFT crew in the state and a great ben­e­fit to both inmates and the larg­er Rifle area community.

“It’s so ben­e­fi­cial because it helps keep the cost of fight­ing fires down and real­ly does teach some­one a use­ful skill they can take to the streets instead of going back to com­mit­ting crime,” Mor­gan empha­sized. “I know for a fact the state and fed­er­al (fire) pro­tec­tion offices around Rifle have the utmost respect for the SWIFT program.”

Ryan McCul­ley, bat­tal­ion chief for the Col­orado Riv­er region of the Col­orado Divi­sion of Fire Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol, voiced respect for the Col­orado SWIFT pro­grams. He said he’s worked with all three SWIFT branch­es over the years and that each hand crew pro­vides high-qual­i­ty fire­fight­ing assistance.

McCul­ley explained that hand crews are uti­lized to cut fire lines, or for­est breaks cleared to help con­tain and stop the spread of a wild­fire beyond road­ways. Dur­ing the wild­fire sea­son, hand crews can some­times be hard to find, as many are deployed all over the coun­try, McCul­ley said, so it’s been good to have the SWIFT crews avail­able for Col­orado-spe­cif­ic wildfires.

“We can count on them to be there when we need them,” McCul­ley said. He also men­tioned that the SWIFT crews are often cheap­er to uti­lize but empha­sized that it’s the qual­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of their work that makes the most impact. “They’re a huge ben­e­fit to local fire depart­ments and coun­ties across the state.”

This year, because of the COVID-19 cri­sis, the SWIFT crews are only doing wild­fire mit­i­ga­tion and for­est-relat­ed projects, not help­ing direct­ly fight fire, Sny­der said.

Regard­less, crew mem­bers like EJ, who has been a part of the Rifle SWIFT pro­gram for more than four years, said he just loves the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be out­side and to give back to var­i­ous Col­orado communities.

“I love being out here, out in the open with nature. It’s so beau­ti­ful,” EJ said. “It’s real­ly an hon­or and a priv­i­lege to be a part of some­thing big­ger and to help oth­er people.”

After EJ is released on parole lat­er this year, he said he plans to pur­sue a career as a hot­shot in Cal­i­for­nia. He said he’s fall­en in love with wild­land fire­fight­ing because it’s shown him his poten­tial as a hard work­er and a leader, and hopes that the pub­lic can under­stand how pro­grams like SWIFT can help peo­ple bet­ter themselves.

“Even though what we did got us here, we’ve tak­en the step to be on this crew so we don’t make the same mis­takes. … We can try to change what we were in the past and be bet­ter and this gives us that oppor­tu­ni­ty to bet­ter our­selves and to help our­selves be proud of some­thing,” EJ said of the Rifle SWIFT pro­gram. “Instead of being viewed as a fail­ure that com­mit­ted a crime, we become more than that.”