SACRAMENTO, California — A California state firefighter arrested on suspicion of arson last week started out in the state's inmate firefighter program after a DUI felony, according to court records released Tuesday.
Robert Hernandez's criminal record and history of working as an inmate firefighter emerged in a court filing ahead of his first hearing in Sonoma County Superior Court on five felony charges of setting fires in Sonoma and Mendocino counties in August and September.
Hernandez, 38, started a six-year sentence in 2017 after being convicted of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated in San Bernardino, according to county court records and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
He was released on parole in December 2018 after serving eight months as a firefighter at the Bishop-area Owens Valley Conservation Camp, one of several facilities jointly operated by Cal Fire and the CDCR to put inmates to work fighting fires and shorten their sentences for good behavior. While on parole, he attended the Ventura Training Center, which educates and certifies former inmate firefighters, from January to October 2019. He was discharged from parole in November 2020, according to CDCR.
The case is a black eye for Cal Fire and the inmate fire camps during one of the biggest wildfire seasons in recent years, with one million acres burned so far — more than the past two years combined. The Newsom administration has spent millions of dollars to increase Cal Fire’s ranks over recent years, partly to offset a reduction in inmate firefighters as criminal justice reform decreased the number of incarcerated people. Newsom also signed a 2020 law allowing certain inmates who serve in firefighter camps to have their records expunged to make it easier for them to seek jobs in fire departments.
In a press release last week, Cal Fire Chief Joe Tyler said he was “appalled to learn one of our employees would violate the public’s trust and attempt to tarnish the tireless work of the 12,000 women and men of Cal Fire.”
Cal Fire spokesperson Nick Schuler said in an interview on Tuesday he didn’t know of another firefighter arsonist in Cal Fire’s history, but that the phenomenon has occurred before in other fire departments.
Schuler pointed out that Cal Fire’s own investigators arrested Hernandez and immediately shared the news with the public in an attempt to assuage concerns about public safety. He had no immediate update on disciplinary action, citing confidentiality on personnel matters.
CDCR spokesperson Mary Xjimenez said in an email that the agency "condemn[s] the actions of any individual that endanger our communities and undermine the valuable contributions of fire camp participants."
The agency said incarcerated individuals who volunteer for fire camp "must meet all eligibility criteria meant to protect public safety, including “minimum custody” status, or the lowest-security classification based on their sustained good behavior in prison, ability to follow rules, and participation in rehabilitative programming." It also said that in order to be eligible for the Ventura Training Center, "participants must have had minimum-custody status while incarcerated and were determined to be eligible after a review of their behavior in prison, medical and mental health issues, and time remaining to serve."
Hernandez is in custody and doesn't yet have an attorney, according to Sonoma County court officials. He was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday morning, but the hearing was delayed because the court’s recordkeeping system temporarily went down.
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