Honduras mourns fire victims

help, some unable to flee because they were shackled to the bars of their cells in what is the world’s worst prison fire 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, while others escaped by jumping from the prison rooftop.
There were reports that others fled the crowded facility in the central Honduran city of Comayagua and were on the loose. Honduras – like much of Central America – has been gripped by drug violence in recent years.
Most of the prison fire deaths were caused 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 said.
The enormity of the disaster led President Porfirio Lobo to suspend Honduras’ top prison officials, including the corrections chief, as well as those at the Comayagua penitentiary, while an investigation is under way.
“We will be carrying out a full investigation to determine what caused this sad and unacceptable tragedy, and to determine who shoulders the blame,” Lobo said, adding the officials were suspended to ensure transparency in the probe.
Lobo replaced corrections chief Danilo Orellana with his deputy Abraham Figueroa.
The inferno broke out at around 10:50 pm Tuesday (0450 GMT Wednesday), and burned for around three hours before it was brought 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, 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, as 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.
“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 on 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. They wouldn’t have died if they had just opened the doors,” he said.
The Organisation of American States in Washington said it was launching a probe into the disaster.
Governor 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 on 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.
Meanwhile, EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton conveyed her “great sorrow” yesterday saying she “has learned with great sorrow of the fire that broke out at the Comayagua prison in Honduras yesterday, which resulted in the tragic loss of many lives.” – AFP.