More Than 360 Killed In Honduras Prison Fire
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 11:50 pm
More than 350 convicts died screaming and spluttering when a huge fire ripped through a prison in Honduras, reducing large swathes of the complex to a blackened husk.
Honduras President Porfirio Lobo also suspended local and national prison officials while the inquiry into the “unacceptable” tragedy at the jail in Comayagua was conducted. Justice Richard Ordonez, a supreme court judge who is leading the investigation, said officials had confirmed 358 people died in the fire.
The fire was one of the worst tragedies of its kind in decades in Latin America and focused renewed attention on the often poor conditions of prisons in the region. Survivors told investigators that an unidentified inmate screamed “We will all die here!” as he lit fire to his bedding late Tuesday night in the prison in the central town of Comayagua.
The prison, located some 90 kilometres north of the capital city of Tegucigalpa, held around 850 prisoners. The authorities are trying to establish whether the blaze in the overcrowded prison was started deliberately by an inmate or was caused by an electrical fault.
The blaze spread within minutes, killing about 100 inmates in their cells as firefighters struggled to find officials who had keys, Josue Garcia, a Comayagua fire department spokesman, said. About 200 meters away from the prison, Carlos Alfredo Garcia Zepeda said he was inside his home when he heard a series of blasts, like a bomb.
Rescuers carried shirtless, semi-conscious prisoners from the facility by their arms and legs. One hauled a victim away from the fire by piggyback. Orellana added that official were already at work trying to determine what caused the blaze.
“This was no accident,” said Carmen Sapeda, 47, who came to see if her convict brother Wilfredo was alive. “This was planned from inside the prison,” she said as dozens of friends and family members threw sticks at police in a pickup truck and screamed “murderers” at them.
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