Facing $1.5B fire alarm bill, CA prisons go with human smoke detectors

California's prisons face a critical infrastructure gap. All thirty-one state facilities have fire alarm systems that are outdated, broken, or inoperable. Replacing them would cost one point five billion dollars. The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation decided against that price tag, instead spending nearly fifty million dollars over five years on fire watch—paying correctional officers to patrol and watch for smoke and fire. Officers performing this duty typically earn around nine thousand six hundred dollars a month, usually as overtime. The department is also piloting a cheaper option at Solano State Prison, hiring office assistants at about four thousand three hundred dollars monthly for the same role. Experts, however, are divided. Kristen Cowan, an assistant professor who studies disaster preparedness in prisons, calls fire alarm systems baseline and wonders what else might be missing. Matt Cate, the former state corrections secretary, counters that large-scale prison fires are extremely rare in concrete-and-steel structures with round-the-clock staffed fire departments.

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