Official: 358 killed in Honduras prison fire

FREDDY CUEVAS, MARCOS ALEMAN

Asso­ci­ated Press

COMAYAGUA, Hon­duras — Hon­duran offi­cials con­firmed Wednes­day that 358 peo­ple died when a fire tore through an over­crowded prison, mak­ing it the world’s dead­liest prison fire in a century.

With 856 pris­on­ers packed into bar­racks, the farm prison in the Comayagua province north of the cap­i­tal was at dou­ble capac­ity, said Supreme Court Jus­tice Richard Ordonez, who is lead­ing the investigation.

Ordonez told The Asso­ci­ated Press the fire started in a bar­racks where 105 pris­on­ers were bunked, and only four of them sur­vived. Some 115 bod­ies have been sent to the morgue in the cap­i­tal of Tegucigalpa.

The fire started by an inmate tore through the prison, burn­ing and suf­fo­cat­ing scream­ing men in their crowded bar­racks as res­cuers des­per­ately searched for keys to unlock the doors.

The local gov­er­nor, who was once a prison employee, told reporters that an inmate called her moments before the blaze broke out and screamed: “I will set this place on fire and we are all going to die!”

Comayagua Gov. Paola Cas­tro said she called the Red Cross and fire brigade imme­di­ately. But fire­fight­ers said they were kept out­side for half an hour by guards who fired their guns in the air, think­ing they had a riot or a break­out on their hands.

Offi­cials have long had lit­tle con­trol over con­di­tions inside many Hon­duran pris­ons, where inmates have largely unfet­tered access to cell phones and other contraband.

Sur­vivors also told inves­ti­ga­tors that the uniden­ti­fied inmate yelled “We will all die here!” as he lit fire to his bed­ding late Tues­day night in the prison in Comayagua, 53 miles (86 kilo­me­ters) north of Tegu­ci­galpa. The lockup housed peo­ple con­victed of seri­ous crimes such as homi­cide and armed rob­bery, but also peo­ple await­ing trial.

“We couldn’t get them out because we didn’t have the keys and couldn’t find the guards who had them,” Comayagua fire depart­ment spokesman Josue Gar­cia said.

Other pris­on­ers were set free by guards but died from the flames or smoke as they tried to flee into the fields sur­round­ing the facil­ity, where pris­on­ers grew corn and beans on a state-run farm.

Res­cuers car­ried shirt­less, semi­con­scious pris­on­ers from the prison by their arms and legs. One hauled a vic­tim away by piggyback.

Comayagua was built in the 1940s for 400 inmates.

Unlike U.S. pris­ons, where locks can be released auto­mat­i­cally in an emer­gency, Hon­duran pris­ons are infa­mous for being old, over­crowded hotbeds of con­flict and crime.

Once inside, res­cue work­ers found piles of bod­ies so badly burned they looked like piles of charred man­nequins. Some bod­ies fused together, and offi­cials said it could take weeks to iden­tify them.

Out­side the prison fam­ily mem­bers gath­ered late into the after­noon, some cry­ing and some demand­ing justice,

“We want to see the body,” shouted Juan Mar­tinez, whose son was reported dead. “We’ll be here until we get to do that.”

Sur­vivor Ever Lopez, 24, who was serv­ing time for homi­cide, said he was sleep­ing when the fire broke out about 11 p.m.

“I saw the smoke from cell block 6 and it spread through­out the prison,” he said. “The other pris­on­ers and I broke through the roof with our bare hands and fled. Thank God I’m alive.”

Offi­cials said 272 peo­ple were con­firmed dead, but many pris­on­ers were unac­counted for and the death toll could go to 300 or more. Among the dead were six pris­on­ers who drowned after try­ing to seek refuge in a water tank. There were 852 peo­ple in the prison at the time of the blaze.

A pris­oner iden­ti­fied as Sil­ve­rio Aguilar told HRN Radio that he first knew some­thing was wrong when he heard a scream of “Fire! Fire!”

“For a while, nobody lis­tened. But after a few min­utes, which seemed like an eter­nity, a guard appeared with keys and let us out,” he said.

He said there were 60 pris­on­ers packed into his cell.

National prison sys­tem direc­tor Danilo Orel­lana defended the guards’ deci­sion to keep fire­fight­ers out as flames lit up the night sky.

“The guards first thought they had a prison break, so they fol­lowed the law say­ing no one could enter to pre­vent unnec­es­sary deaths,” he said.

Hon­duran Pres­i­dent Por­firio Lobo said on national tele­vi­sion that he had sus­pended the country’s top penal offi­cials, includ­ing Orel­lana, and would request inter­na­tional assis­tance in car­ry­ing out a thor­ough investigation.

“This is a day of pro­found sad­ness,” Lobo said.

Orel­lana said the con­victs were allowed to work out­doors, unlike those held in a maximum-security facil­ity for the country’s most dan­ger­ous pris­on­ers in the cap­i­tal, Tegucigalpa.

Located in the mid­dle of irri­gated fields and sev­eral large ponds, the prison was com­prised of 12 build­ings set close together, with an open, dirt prison yard within a cen­tral com­pound. A sin­gle dirt road led into the facil­ity, which has a soc­cer field on the property.

Hon­duras has one of the world’s high­est rates of vio­lent crime, and its over­crowded and dilap­i­dated pris­ons have been hit by a string of deadly riots and fires in recent years. Offi­cials have repeat­edly pledged to improve con­di­tions, only to say they don’t have suf­fi­cient funds.

Tuesday’s blaze was the world’s dead­liest prison fire since 1930, when 322 pris­on­ers were killed in Ohio.

The U.S. State Depart­ment has crit­i­cized Hon­duras for “harsh prison con­di­tions” and vio­lence against detainees.

A 2004 fire at a state prison north of the Hon­duran cap­i­tal killed more than 100 incar­cer­ated gang mem­bers. A fire a year ear­lier at a nearby facil­ity killed 70 gang mem­bers. And in 1994, a fire sparked by an over­heated refrig­er­a­tor motor in an over­crowded Hon­duras prison killed 103 people.

Hon­duran author­i­ties have repeat­edly pledged to improve con­di­tions, but human rights groups say lit­tle has been done in the coun­try of 7.6 mil­lion peo­ple, a major tran­sit route for drugs headed from South Amer­ica to the United States.

“This is a prob­lem that’s existed for a long time and the solu­tions haven’t been applied. But now we have to do some­thing even though we don’t have the money,” Secu­rity Min­is­ter Pom­peyo Bonilla told reporters.

The U.S. sent help from a base at Soto Cano Air Base, about 15 min­utes from the prison.

U.S. Mil­i­tary Staff Sgt. Bryan Franks said smoke was no longer vis­i­ble above the city, and that his team included four vehi­cles made up of a 10-man med­ical team, secu­rity guards and firefighters.

Hun­dreds of rel­a­tives rushed to Santa Teresa Hos­pi­tal in Comayagua state to learn the fate of their loved ones, fire chief Leonel Silva said.

Lucy Marder, chief of foren­sic med­i­cine for the prosecutor’s office, said she believed the death toll would rise and it would take at least three months to iden­tify vic­tims, some burned beyond recog­ni­tion, because DNA tests will be required.

Hon­duras has 24 pris­ons, 23 for men or both gen­ders, and one exclu­sively for women. In Decem­ber, the total prison pop­u­la­tion was 11,846 of which 411 were women.

Posted by AP News on Feb 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.