Scores die as fire sweeps prison in Chile

A fire which broke out during a riot in a severely overcrowded Chilean prison killed more than 80 inmates today.

Although more than 200 prisoners were moved to safety, 147 others were in the immediate area of the blaze, and many died of asphyxiation.

The San Miguel prison outside the capital Santiago was designed to hold 700 people but was crammed with 1,900 prisoners when the fire broke out.

“The conditions that existed inside this prison are absolutely inhumane,” said Chilean President Sebastian Pinera after visiting the scene.

It was visitors’ day at the prison, and many family members were already queuing up outside when the fire broke out.

Their anxiety spilled over when they learned that prisoners were killed. Some broke down in tears and screams, while others threw rocks at the prison police director as he read the survivors’ names over a megaphone.

Hundreds of anxious and angry relatives of inmates gathered outside the prison gates. Some said that prison police initially closed the gates to firefighters, impeding efforts by 10 responding units to control the blaze.

National prison police director Luis Masferrer said the blaze broke out at about 5.30am and it was brought under control three hours later.

Chile’s health minister, Jaime Manalich, called it an “enormous calamity,” “probably the worst in the history of our penitentiary system.”

Firefighters said they were alerted to the fire by a call from a mobile phone inside the prison.

Authorities have not said why so many inmates died in the part of the prison where the blaze began, on the third floor of Tower 5. Firefighters had to work with police to avoid more problems with prisoners all around them.

“They wouldn’t let the firefighters come in. The riot police came in first and began to beat us, and later the firefighters came in,” an unidentified prisoner said in a mobile phone call.

Fire Department Commander Jose Sanchez said it took 10 minutes for firefighters to enter the prison, but he blamed any delay on “the intense heat on the floor where the fire was” rather than on guards.