A day-long blaze erupted in the prison's powerhouse. Apparently, coal and/or ash in a newly installed fuel-tower or coal scuttle ignited. Until about 3:30 in the afternoon, fire hoses poured water into both the top and bottom of the tower. So much water was expended that the prison's water supply was effected.
Hiding details, officials of the prison would not allow me to obtain any direct information about the fire. Prison officials commonly protect their lucrative positions by censorship and lying. I don't know how many prisoners were killed and injured and I don't know what injuries may have been suffered by the staff.
While the fire appears to have been confined to the powerhouse, the ancient prison was engulfed with noxious smoke. More victims die from smoke inhalation than from fire.
The cost of the fire to taxpayers has been kept secret.
SCI-Huntingdon is a very dangerous firetrap. It is the most dangerous of the state's 25 prisons and it is one of the worst managed. The powerhouse fire occurred only 5 months after a very dangerous blaze in the prison's
Armory! The bumbling management of the prison has retaliated against prisoners who've tried to complain about conditions.
There can be little serious doubt that the prison is so dangerous and so very badly managed that it should be closed. Prisoners should not be locked in a deadly firetrap where at any moment they could die from official neglect and official greed. The court has been petitioned to evacuate prisoners from the prison.
Frederick Frank, a former prison guard, is Superintendent of the prison. The fire-safety of the prison (or lack of it) appears to violate MANY state laws. Because it's only prisoners who are at risk, officials don't really care much. Prison executives don't worry much about the ordinary guards, either. We taxpayers are expending a small fortune to pay "Swamp Thing" and other Department of Corrections ("DOC") lawyers to fight in court to be allowed to keep the prison deadly dangerous and to keep prisoners locked inside it.
Prison officials generally regard prisoners as nothing more than so much meat to be sorted as an easy way to collect a sweet state paycheck. If a few prisoners cook to death, it's no great loss. Ridge will round up plenty more from the poor neighborhoods of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In past centuries former slavers had to go all the way to Africa.
Efforts by this website to obtain press releases and other information from the Department Of Corrections have been ignored. Official DOC propaganda is heavily biased. It is released only to parrots in the media who are friendly to the official DOC line. Since we are critical of the DOC, we are denied the information that you pay to have fed to sympathetic mouthpieces. I'm sorry for the shortage of facts.
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