Survivors described wrenching scenes as prisoners pleaded for help as they were engulfed by choking smoke and flames, some unable to flee because they were still shackled to the bars of their cells in what is the world’s worst prison blaze in a decade.
Those who were able “tried to save themselves by hurling themselves into the shower, sinks” and any other source of water they could find, one survivor said after the blaze in the jail in the central city of Comayagua.
Some of the inmates escaped by jumping from the prison rooftop, and there were reports that some had fled the crowded facility and were on the loose.
Those who died were killed mostly by smoke inhalation.
“More than 350 dead, it is an approximation, we cannot rule out that it could be a bit higher, but we are checking so we can give an official and precise toll for this tragedy,” Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla told reporters at the prison.
The inferno broke out at around 10:50 pm Tuesday (0450 GMT Wednesday), and took about three hours to bring under control.
Officials were unclear about the cause, at first believing that the blaze was sparked by a short circuit. But later they did not rule out that the fire might have been deliberately set by inmates.
Victor Sevilla said he was haunted by the desperate cries for help from his fellow prisoners trapped in their cells and who could not get out in time.
“I woke up with all the screaming from my fellow inmates, who were already breaking the wood and zinc ceiling,” Sevilla, 23, told AFP, speaking at Comayagua’s Santa Teresa hospital where he was being treated for a broken ankle after jumping to safety from a wall.
Fabricio Contreras, 34, said he was also woken up by the commotion. The prisoners headed to the main gate, “but nobody opened it,” he said.
“The prison guards were firing in the air because they thought it was a breakout,” he said.
Prison officials and rescue workers dressed in white hazard suits moved in Wednesday to remove the charred remains, as distraught relatives wept openly, clinging to each other as they mourned the deaths of their loved ones.
Many blamed prison authorities for moving too slowly to save them. “My son died of asphyxiation there,” said Leonidas Medina, 69, at a local hospital.
“The guards wouldn’t open the door and they (the inmates) burned to death,”
he said. “They wouldn’t have died if they had just opened the doors.”
The enormity of the disaster led President Porfirio Lobo to suspend Honduras’s top penal officials, as well as those at the Comayagua penitentiary while an investigation is underway.
The Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington said it was also launching a probe into the disaster.
Prisons in Honduras -- as is the case throughout Latin America -- are notoriously overcrowded. The country’s 24 penal facilities officially have room for 8,000 inmates, but actually house 13,000.
The prison in Comayagua, located some 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of the capital city of Tegucigalpa, held almost double its official inmate capacity.
The facility is also just 500 meters from a highway that links San Pedro Sula, the economic center of Honduras, with the capital city Tegucigalpa.
The governor of the region Paola Castro said her office received a phone call from someone claiming to be an inmate, telling her that another prisoner had set the fire in a suicide bid.
Desperate relatives, frustrated at being left in the dark about the fate of their loved ones, clashed with police and then stormed the prison gates early Wednesday.
Security forces fired into the air in a bid to stop the unrest, but the relatives burst through a locked gate and flooded into the facility, where they gathered in a front courtyard.
“My brother Roberto Mejia was in unit six,” an emotional Glenda Mejia told AFP. “They’ve told me that the inmates from that unit are all dead.”
Officials here expressed sympathy with the relatives’ frustration, but called for patience.
“We understand the pain of the families, but we have to follow a process under the law,” Bonilla said. “We call for calm. It is a very difficult situation.” (AFP)
<관련 한글 기사>
온두라스 교도소 화재 사망자 350명 넘어
불길 번져도 교도관들은 도와주긴커녕 발포
교도소 철장 껴안은 채 타 죽은 시신들 발견
중미 온두라스의 교도소에서 14일(현지시간) 발생한 화재 참사로 350여명이 사망했다고 현지 관계자들이 15일 밝혔다.
온두라스 법무부의 고위관계자인 다넬리아 페레라는 수도 테구시갈파에서 북쪽으로 90㎞ 떨어진 코마야과 교도소에서 전날 밤 발생한 화재로 총 359명이 숨졌다고 말했다.
페레라는 교도소 안의 시신들이 심하게 훼손됐다며 DNA 및 치아 검사를 통해 사 망자의 신원 확인 작업을 진행할 것이라고 말했다.
현지 구조 당국도 이날 화재를 진압하는 데 3시간 가까이 소요됐으며, 불길이 잡히고 나서 교도소 안으로 들어가 보니 교도소 철장을 껴안은 채 타죽은 죄수들의 시신이 있었다고 전했다.
폼페요 보니야 치안장관도 이날 화재로 300명 이상이 사망했다고 확인했다. 한 생존 재소자는 불길이 번져 죄수들이 교도관들에게 도움을 요청했지만 아무도 문을 열어주지 않았으며 "오히려 집단 탈옥이라고 판단해 허공에 총을 쐈다"고 말했다.
코마야과 교도소는 정원이 900명임에도 그동안 2천명 가까운 재소자를 수용해왔던 것으로 알려졌다.
한편, 이번 화재 참사의 생존자 중 최소 8명은 재소자 한 명이 매트리스에 불을 질렀다고 진술한 것으로 알려져 화인이 방화일 가능성이 제기됐다. (연합뉴스)
