If you stack up all the facts about fire season in the American West, they can get overwhelming.

Right now there are dozens of fires all around the country.

The largest, the bootleg fire, has grown to be the size of Los Angeles.

And no matter where you live, you can physically feel the impact.

Smoke has swirled from Oregon and California all the way to New York, which is where Jamie Lowe lives.

I mean, I was walking around yesterday and I could tell that the air quality was definitely affected.

The sun was kind of orange and muted, which feels like we are in that apocalyptic science fiction world.

Jamie's a reporter. She's also a native Californian. She's become something of a fire expert.

I feel like I know so much about what's happening in that state that I am like chicken little

running around going everyone get out, but everyone stay because it's also a great state.

It's a very conflicting feeling.

One of the reasons Jamie feels so conflicted about the way her home state deals with this climate crisis

is because of who the state recruits to fight its fires each year.

They're the usual union guys, the hotshot crews that patrol inside the actual flames.

And then there are the incarcerated fire crews. Convicted felons paid just a few dollars a day

to cut fire lines alongside the professionals. Jamie didn't even know about these fire crews

until she was flipping through the paper a few years back and saw this headline.

Female inmate firefighter dies following injury in Malibu Blaze.

That inmate was a woman named Shauna Lynn Jones.

She was just 22.

I read this story and it was like, you know, it was like 500 words.

So it was short.

...