A 20-man crew of inmates from the Southern Idaho Correctional Institution soon will be awaiting a new assignment - fighting forest and range fires that are expected to plague the Western states this summer.
Known as the "smokebusters," the crew has completed three days of classroom training.This will be the fourth year that the institution's inmate crew will fight fires throughout the Intermountain Region.
The crew was established in 1987 as a means to shore up the state's firefighting forces and to relieve prison overcrowding.