A fire started by an inmate tore through an overcrowded prison in Honduras, burning and suffocating screaming men in their locked cells as rescuers desperately searched for keys. Officials confirmed 358 dead Wednesday, making it the world’s deadliest prison fire in a century.
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 after receiving the call late Tuesday night. 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 told investigators the unidentified inmate set fire to his bedding in the farm prison in the central town of Comayagua, 53 miles (86 kilometers) north of Tegucigalpa. The lockup housed people convicted of serious crimes such as homicide and armed robbery, but also those who had yet to be tried.
The blaze spread within minutes, killing inmates in their locked barracks.
“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.
Survivors told grim tales of climbing walls to break the sheet metal roofing and escape, only to see prisoners in other cell blocks being burned alive. Inmates were found stuck to the prison’s metal roofing, their burned bodies fused to the metal.
“I only saw flames, and when we got out, they were being burned, up against the bars, they were stuck to them,” said Eladio Chicas, 40, who was in his 15th year of a 39-year sentence.
“It was something horrible,” he said as he was led away by police, handcuffed, to testify before a local court about what he saw. “This is a nightmare.”
With 856 prisoners packed into barracks, the prison was at double capacity, said Supreme Court Justice Richard Ordonez, who is leading the investigation. There were only 12 guards on duty when the fire broke out, said state prosecutor German Enamorado.
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 had been sent on Wednesday to the morgue in the capital of Tegucigalpa and that 358 people had been confirmed dead.
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.
Ordonez said the inmates’ bodies were found piled up in the prison’s bathrooms, where they apparently fled to turn on the showers and hope the water would save them from the blistering flames.
http://www.punchng.com/news/world/official-358-killed-in-honduras-prison-fire/
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