SUNDAY 21 DECEMBER 2014 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 Gone With inside the Wind FOOD • The cheesiest turns 75 pizza in the world P | 4 P | 8-9 MARKET PLACE • Qatar Petroleum honours scholarship programme students Thousands of convicted felons form the backbone of California’s P | 5 wildfire protection force under a unique and little-known prison SCIENCE • Searching for labour programme. life on Mars P | 7 HEALTH • Americans are trading sleep for work P | 11 TECHNOLOGY • Drone downer: Will new FAA rules ground recreational fliers P | 12 LEARN ARABIC FIREFIGHTING • Learn commonly used Arabic words and their meanings REFORMATION P | 13 2 PLUS | SUNDAY 21 DECEMBER 2014 COVER STORY California’s inmate firefighting corps Prison inmates Gilbert Serrato, 33, (left) and Joshua Mojarro, 28, wait to be assigned to work projects at Oak Glen Conservation Fire Camp #35 in Yucaipa, California. BY STEVE GORMAN Prison inmates lay water pipe on a work attling one of California’s project outside Oak Glen first major wildfires of the Conservation Fire Camp year, Kevin Black sud- #35 in Yucaipa Bdenly realised the only way to keep from being engulfed by flames roaring up a hillside toward his team was to finish the buffer line they were hacking through drought-parched brush. “Either we get this line in, or we burn,” Black, 54, recalled shouting as he and his fellow crew members — all prison inmates clad in orange fatigues — hurried to cut a 6-foot- wide fire break with hand tools in the thick scrub. The squad survived, and fire- fighters ultimately managed to contain the 2,100-acre blaze in early May without losing any of the homes threatened in the wealthy community of Rancho Cucamonga, east of Los Angeles. PLUS | SUNDAY 21 DECEMBER 2014 3 The inmates’ main job is to carve containment lines. Under supervision of Cal Fire captains, they work with heavy gear in intense heat and rugged terrain, often in 24- Correctional officer Tim Bruzzesi checks prison inmates’ lunch boxes as they hour shifts. walk out of Oak Glen Conservation Fire Camp #35 to go to work projects in Yucaipa, California. Black is among thousands of convicted felons who program. Participation is voluntary, and many Prison inmate Kevin Black, 54, who is in the last 90 form the backbone of California’s wildfire protection inmates earn two days off their sentences for each days of an eleven-year sentence, clears the path force under a unique and little-known prison labour day in camp. The pay is scant - just $1.45 a day in to lay water pipes outside Oak Glen Conservation programme. camp plus $1 an hour on the fire line. Fire Camp #35 in Yucaipa, California. But California may soon find it harder to recruit “Nobody in the world would do this work for new inmate firefighters after a ballot measure was that kind of money. That’s why they use us,” said passed last month to ease prison crowding by reduc- Oak Glen inmate firefighter Ishmil Swafford, 35, ing felony sentences to misdemeanour jail terms for who is ineligible for a reduction in his 10-year-plus most non-violent, low-level offenses, including many term for burglary. drug crimes. Many in the camps, which inmates say offer That measure will likely diminish the very seg- more freedom than conventional prisons, also see ment of the inmate population that the California the program as a means of building discipline, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal teamwork, and a resume of sorts ahead of release. Fire, draws upon to fill its wildland firefighting crews. “It re-acclimates you to going back to society,” Housed in 39 minimum-security “conservation said Black, due for release in February after serv- camps” run by the state corrections department, the ing nearly a 12-year sentence for robbery, about a firefighting inmates also do brush clearance, flood third of that at Oak Glen. control and park maintenance projects. The inmates’ main job is to carve containment Despite sentencing reforms that may reduce the lines. Under supervision of Cal Fire captains, they inmate firefighting pool, Cal Fire officials say they are work with heavy gear in intense heat and rugged determined to continue excluding violent criminals, terrain, often in 24-hour shifts. sex offenders and arsonists from the program. The work is dangerous. Twelve inmate firefight- Misdemeanour offenders, with shorter sentences, ers nearly died this year when they were forced to have long been ineligible because training them is not outrun a wall of advancing flames in the Sierras. considered worth the investment. But fatalities are rare. The last inmate killed in “It might do some damage to our pipeline,” said the line of duty suffered a heart attack in 2007, corrections Sergeant John Lanthripp, assistant com- Cal Fire spokesman Mike Mohler said. mander of the largest of the camps, Oak Glen, in Still, critics say the program raises questions Southern California’s San Bernardino Mountains. about the inherently coercive nature of inmate The change comes as California firefighting labor and speaks volumes about prison conditions resources are increasingly stretched by more large generally. wildfires, and a longer fire season, attributed to the “It’s telling us something when people are more state’s prolonged drought. willing, literally, to go into a fire than stay impris- Some 4,300 California inmates, including about 200 oned in a cell,” said Mohamed Shehk, a spokesman women, are assigned to the camps and comprise Cal for advocacy group Critical Resistance. Fire’s entire corps of specially trained ground crews Officials acknowledge inmate firefighters would who battle wildfires without water - using tools like be sorely missed if the state had to do without chainsaws, shovels and axes. They account for nearly them. half of Cal Fire’s total year-round force. “They do a tremendous amount of work for us, Other states employ inmate labour to fight wild- and honestly, we’d be hurting if we didn’t have fires, but none like California, which saves up to these crews in place,” Cal Fire spokeswoman Lynn $100mn annually in personnel costs through its Tolmachoff said. Reuters 4 PLUS | SUNDAY 21 DECEMBER 2014 FOOD The cheesiest pizza in the world By Johanna Leggatt It takes between 45 minutes and a regular on the Gradi menu. pizza and ribs joint, but it is anything an hour to do this, which is why di “We will see how it goes, if people but. t must be difficult finding new Francesco chose to serve his 99-cheese really, really want it then we will do Di Francesco sourced cheeses from culinary Everests to climb when pizza for a limited two-hour block dur- it,” he says. Australia and all over the world to cre- you are the world’s best pizza chef. ing lunchtime service at his Gradi res- So how does it taste? ate a just-right flavour combination, I But the pizza legend Johnny di taurant in the Crown casino complex Fantastic. Di Francesco has created and each cheese has a role to play. Francesco — of Melbourne’s 400 Gradi on Saturday. a balanced and surprisingly nuanced There is a mixture of soft and hard fame — may just have outdone himself The $23 pizza is labour intensive, pizza. It sounds like a supersized hot cheeses in the super cheese base — with his latest pizza topping, if you and Di Francesco looks visibly over- mess, the kind of novelty cuisine you taleggio, aged cheddar, double cream could even call it that. whelmed at the thought of it becoming might see on a menu at a suburban brie, pecorino and gorgonzola among Di Francesco calls it the super them — but little mozzarella as it does cheese: a blend of 94 cheeses he has not melt down well. carefully selected to form the base for Some cheeses have little flavour his 99-cheese pizza. but are used chiefly to offset the Five cheeses are added on top of the sharpness of other cheeses, to provide super cheese base — fior di latte, buf- a creamy counterpoint or sometimes falo mozzarella, goat cheese, ricotta just texture. and shaved raspadura— to take the But Di Francesco proves that good- cheese count to just under 100. quality cheeses are varied enough to So how does a 99-cheese pizza come create a series of balanced flavours about? rather than one generic, cheesy taste. Di Francesco, who this year took out Crucially, I didn’t walk away from first place at the pizza world champion- Gradi feeling as though I had just eaten ships in Italy, said: “No one has done 99 cheeses. The topping is generous this before. So I thought I would give without being excessive and because it a go.” the super cheese is so concentrated He experimented with six recipes little is actually needed. And the bases before hitting the jackpot. “I woke up are delectably light. Di Francesco one morning and I just knew I had it,” comes from the Neapolitan school he says. of pizza making that does not aspire The super cheese is created by melt- to overly crispy bases: his pizzas are ing down the 94 cheeses in a large pot foldable and pliable with a soft, light and then blast chilling them so they dough. form a solid block of cheese. The Guardian MARKET PLACE PLUS | SUNDAY 21 DECEMBER 2014 5 QP honours scholarship programme students ngineer Saad Sherida Al Kaabi, President and CEO of Qatar EPetroleum (QP), gave recogni- tion recently to 140 Qatari nationals who have completed their academic studies and training programmes under QP’s scholarship programme.