The Deadly Firetrap Prison

Prisoners have filed formal complaints and suits. For their efforts, the prison administration has retaliated against them. One conscientious prisoner, Roger Jochen, had his records doctored with phony drug charges. He was summarily shipped to be punished in a special drug racketeer's prison. 

Retaliation and revenge against prisoners who try to improve their lot is a common practice. Of course, it's unconstitutional to punish a person for exercising his First Amendment right of petitioning the courts, but prison administrators flout the law every day. 

One recent suit filed about the extreme fire dangers in the prison is Turiano verses Horn. It alleges that the prison's acute fire dangers amount to cruel and unusual punishment. The suit demands that the prison be closed, replaced or made fire-safe. 

Here again, the prisoner who filed the suit was subjected to punishment and retaliation. He was thrown into the hole and reduced in status. 

The prison administration pretends that prisoners are crybabies who are perfectly safe. The DOC wants the prisoners and the public to trust them. The truth is that the DOC is a callous tyranny which is utterly indifferent to the wellbeing of prisoners or the safety of the public. The DOC is so drunk with power that abuse is standard practice. 

Because this matter is so important and implicates the lives and safety of 1750 prisoners and 450 members of the staff, we list some of the fire dangers which the prisoners claim exist in the prison. 

• The prison experiences between 2 and 3 fires a year on average. It is a deadly firetrap. 
• Fire engines and fire-fighting equipment can't get close enough to the buildings to fight fires becuase the buildings have been thrown up in a dangerous, unplanned and haphazard maze without regard for safety. 
• The fire exits from most of the buildigns are locked, chained and/or obstructed. The keys are kept far away. 
• There are no fire and/or smoke detectors in many of the buidlings. The buildings which have detectors have too few to be effective. 
• Even though there was a very dangerous fire in the prison ARMORY the building has no smoke or fire detectors, no alarms, no fire sprinkler system and is furnished with wooden shelving and cabinets. 
• There are no fire sprinkler systems in many of the buildings. 
• There are no fire hoses or fire-fighting equipment in the buildings and only limited access to fire extinguishers. 
• In the six cellblocks where prisoners are actually housed, there are no fire hoses and no fire extinguishers above the ground tier. 
• There is no ventilation or improper ventilation in many of the sweatshop buildings causing the risk of dust explosions and the inability to evacuate smoke. Smoke is the worst killer in a fire. 
• Combustible chemicals are used in many buildings as, for example, the waterproofing of guards' rain-gear performed by entrapped prisoners in the attic of the garment plant. 
• Unprotected prisoners are required to fight dangerous fires as, for example the August 1998 fire in hundreds of tons of coal in a pole barn on the prison. Even after the unprotected prisoners struggled to extinguish it, they had to return to the smoldering heap time after time. 
• In many places there is exposed electrical wiring, electrical apparatus, unsafe electrical lighting and/or electrical panels. Much of the electrical system is in bad repair and/or it was installed and maintained by uncertified or improperly certified persons. 
• In many places there are exposed high-pressure steam lines which are close to combustible materials and/or which are so situated that prisoners are frequently scalded by them. 
• Wood and other combustible materials are widely used in construction and furnishings in many buildings. Combustible materials are stored and/or used in many of the buildings, as, for example, fabric, sawdust, paints, gasoline and so forth. The prison administration tries to compensate and shift blame by taking the prisoners' papers and property. 
• Gasoline and combustible materials are regularly carried through many buildings, as, for example, trains of lawnmowers being pushed through cellblocks. 
• The buidlings and cellblocks have wooden roofs and/or wooden floors and/or attics. Fire can pass from one side of a buidling or cellblock to the other side. 
• The cellblocks are multi-tiered structures without fire or smoke barriers between the stories. A fire in a cell on the ground tier would sweep and spread to upper cells. 
• The individual cells are tiny (25 square feet) and cramped. They do not meet minimum federal standards. They have very limited air and space in which to move. But, in most cases, the tiny cells are occupied by two prisoners. 
• The individual cells are of the open bar type as opposed to being enclosed. There is absolutely no barrier to the spread of smoke and/or fire. 
• For over thirty years the cells had been equipped with fire-retardant drapes hung behind the bars. The drapes acted as a small buffer to the spread of smoke and fire; a little protection. In 1998, apparently at the behest of a vindictive captain of the guard who intended to humiliate and degrade prisoners, the prison administtration seized the fire-retardant drapes. The men were left exposed and endangered. 
• The individual cells are not equipped with electronic remote unlocking devices to safely unlock the doors. In the event of a fire, prisoners would be trapped to roast in their cells. 
• The doors on the individual cells swing as opposd to sliding. When the door is opened, as when men try to escape from a fire, the doors block the egress of the other men on the narrow tiers. 
• The individual cells are not equipped with smoke detectors or fire sprinklers. 
• Lead based paint which is especially flammable and which liberates especially toxic smoke when burned, is present on the cellblocks and in the cells. 
• The fire doors which exit from the so-called fire escape towers are kept locked. They can only be opened to release fire victims after such a long delay that the prisoners would be dead. 
• Most cells are farther than 50 feet from an exit to the outside. 
• The areas into which prisoners would theoretically be evacuated in the event of fire are too small to hold the hundreds of prisoners at a safe distance (or 50 feet) from the burning buildling. 
• The cellblocks contain more than 200 men,but they are not divided into smoke-tight units of less than 200 persons. 
• In 1992 The Pennsylvania Department of Labor And Industry inspected the prison and issued 32 citations enumerating 291 violations of the fire safety laws. These are only a few of the actual violations. Most of them have not been corrected. 
• In E-Block and F-Block, the number of staircases which prisoners can actually use to flee in the event of fire, has been cut in half. 
• Newly installed fire doors have no windows through which firefighters can assess the danger before entering an area. 
• Most of the newest fire doors actually obstruct egress from a smoke filled area. 
• Most of the cellblocks and buidlings interconnect so that smoke or a fire in one area would quickly spread to other areas either directly or through basements and subterranean passages. 
• Many areas have only one means of exit which, if blocked by fire, would result in large scale loss of life. 
• The partly installed fire sprinkler system is disabled in a control booth which, itself, is susceptible to fire. If a fire involved the area of the control booth, the sprinklers oculd not be activated to protect the cellblocks. 
• Subterranean areas used as dungeons to house prisoners and/or as work areas, have no meaningful safety precautions. The prisoners and staff would be killed en masse. 
• The prison armory (site of the August 1998 blaze) is above ground and within 70 feet of a cellblock. It is adjacent to the parking lot used by staff and visitors and near the gate through which prisoners are received into the prison. 
• All the keys necessary to evacuate prisoners in the event of a fire are stored in a single control room. A fire which involved the poorly protected room would prevent the staff from getting to the keys which are essential to saving fire victims. 

The right thing to do is to close the Huntingdon prison. That's hard to do because the prison system is so crammed with prisoners. The reason for the overcrowding is that the Parole Board has failed to do its legal duty of releasing eligible prisoners. Over 14,000 men have been denied parole by the fanatic board. Parole the eligible men and we could close SCI-Huntingdon and six other state prisons!