Fire Studies: Jail Time: Fighting Fires in Penal Institutions

Engine 36 was dispatched with a full first alarm for a reported prison fire. As they arrived on scene, they found numerous police vehicles assembled around the high-walled facility. A haze of smoke hung over the entire area. The lieutenant of Engine 36 was met by prison officials. There was a disturbance, and a number of prison officials and inmates were injured. Fires burned in numerous areas of the prison. Firefighters weren’t allowed to enter until their safety could be ensured. A staging area was created, medic units were called, and areas were set up for triage, treatment and transportation of the injured. 

It took several hours until calm was restored by correctional officers. At that time, the inmates were removed from the areas where the disturbance occurred, and firefighters, under the protection of the correctional officers, entered and extinguished the still-smoldering fires.

The aforementioned summarizes the events of Oct. 28, 1989, when inmates staged a four-hour uprising at the now shut-down Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. The paragraphs also provide insight into potential problems that a fire department that’s located near a penal institution could expect should it be called on scene. In fact, a local fire department easily can become overwhelmed should a major emergency occur at a prison. Many arson fires are started during periods of unrest in prisons. Firefighters who enter such facilities to conduct an investigation, treat a medical emergency or fight a fire can be intimidated. Verbal abuse and threats often are directed at emergency responders. (The name tags that firefighters wear on their bunker gear make them direct targets.) Inmates could inflict injury on responders, correctional officers, prison workers and fellow prisoners. The warden, although wanting to cooperate with fire personnel, must remain focused on the potential of civil disobedience by the inmates.

Emergency operating plan

Prisons have an emergency operating plan (EOP). Emergency responders must know the plan. That includes the location of the command post where outside agencies will report. It should explain in detail what’s expected of the emergency responders and the interaction and protection that will be provided by the prison personnel. Benchmarks, cues and/or triggers that the officials at the penal institutions use as guidelines for moving prisoners within the facility or to evacuate the prison also are included in the plan.

EOPs must consider the communications that are needed during an incident. Radio transmissions within these structures can experience problems because of the building’s steel and concrete construction.

There are numerous methods of establishing effective communications. One method is the implementation of an existing radio channel(s) that could be used by various agencies. If radios aren’t compatible, close contact between correctional and fire personnel must be maintained by monitoring the available radio frequencies, particularly in locations where firefighting will be ongoing.

Dave Warren was a lieutenant in the Lower Allen Township, PA, Fire Department when he responded to calls when riots broke out at the Camp Hill State Correctional Institution days before the incident at Holmesburg Prison. Warren recently recounted the difficulty that communications posed.

“Everybody was on a different frequency,” Warren told Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ Susan McNaughton. “To communicate with a police officer that might have been 10 feet away from you was, at best, difficult.”

Fire department pre-plans

Pre-planning these facilities allows many decisions to be made in a nonemergency atmosphere, rather than under the tremendous pressure that can exist at the emergency scene. It allows firefighters to develop plans A, B, C, D, etc.

The pre-plan must start with total understanding on the part of the prison officials and fire department members of the potential problems and the possible solutions to those problems. Prison officials need to understand the basic concepts of firefighting. Fire officials want the safety of their personnel who will enter the institutions to be ensured, which only can occur as a result of correctional officers accompanying them and creating clear paths through which fire department members can enter and safely operate.

In addition to basic information, the pre-plan can include:

• the number of inmates who are housed in each area;
• how firefighters can find secondary means of egress, if they exist;
• how to gain exterior access to affect ventilation;
• storage in outbuildings;
• emergency evacuation plans; and
• location of hazardous storage and safety data sheets, or SDS.

The pre-plan should have contingencies for a variety of situations that could occur at a penal institution. These include riots/disturbances, fires, medical emergencies, power outages and movement of prisoners during emergency situations.

Delayed alarms

Although constantly reinforced by fire officials that the fire department immediately should be called to all alarms, this often doesn’t happen in regard to penal institutions. False alarms aren’t uncommon, and minor trash fires can be extinguished quickly by correctional officers. Furthermore, fires might be extinguished or held in check until the arrival of the fire department in newer facilities that have sprinklers.

There typically is a light fire load in a penal institution. The exceptions would be in warehouses, cooking facilities, laundries (cleaning solvents, drying equipment), and shops that contain machinery and other equipment.

Fires

Many fires in penal institutions are set intentionally in bedding. Typically, the bedding contains flame-resistant mattresses, but the blankets and sheets will sustain a fire. (Flame-resistant mattresses will burn if exposed to enough flame.) These fires affect inmates in the immediate area because of the inmates’ inability to remove themselves because of security measures that are in place.

Many other fires start with the careless handling of smoking products. However, there are different locales that banned smoking in penal institutions.

Riots

Fights can be a common occurrence. If these altercations aren’t quelled quickly, they can escalate, creating serious problems. Occasionally, these situations develop into riot conditions.

Firefighters should take no part in controlling riots in any penal institution. Firefighters shouldn’t be in areas where the potential for bodily harm that’s caused by prisoners is possible. Should conditions deteriorate after firefighters enter an area, they should be withdrawn until their safety can be assured.

Warren recalled, “We weren’t allowed to gain access to [Camp Hill] because of what was going on there, so, for several hours, we were just in standby mode.”

(Disturbances often are accompanied by arson. Inmates might use fire as a method of attracting attention for demands that they believe have gone unheeded or as a diversion to cover an escape attempt.)

Riots in penal institutions can become a mass-casualty incident (MCI). This type of MCI varies from others because of the potential for violence by the inmates/patients and their attempt to escape.

Confrontations between correctional officers and rioting prisoners can involve hand-to-hand combat and serious injuries. The need to treat these injuries by emergency responders should be accomplished after the combatants are removed to a secure area. The attempt to use hoselines to control prisoners, if undertaken, must be performed only by law-enforcement personnel, not firefighters.

Evacuation

Some correctional officers are volunteer firefighters, and some penal institutions send correctional officers to receive firefighting training. This has been accomplished by their participating in firefighting school with fire department recruits. During a fire incident in their institution, these trained professionals often can intervene in a situation at an early point in the emergency and mitigate the problems. This can be critical, because you’re dealing with a population that can’t be evacuated easily. In most cases, the best type of evacuation that can be achieved is to have the inmates exit to an enclosed yard area or to another area within the facility. (A problem that can exist is that structures that are built as detention centers for prisoners who await trial might not have outside areas to which they can be moved.)

No matter how small the facility, the total evacuation of a penal institution is a tremendous undertaking and typically won’t occur until after a situation is stabilized. The EOP should spell out the exact method as to how it will be carried out. Normally, the warden or his/her designee will approve the need for evacuation. It must be carried out with maximum security at all times. It requires a large number of correctional officers, police and buses and a secure facility to which inmates can be transported.

Unified command

The need for implementing unified command under the incident command system (ICS) might be necessary at a working fire in a penal institution. Lack of knowledge of the ICS can limit the willingness of some agencies to participate in a unified command organization. It’s impossible to implement unified command unless agencies received training in the ICS and unified command and agree to participate in the process. Discussions of the use and implementation of the ICS need to occur when fire department personnel meet with prison officials to discuss the EOP. Fire department input often can be utilized to improve some aspects of the EOP. In many cases, joint training programs between the agencies lead to well-accepted ventures at a future emergency.

Once it has been decided to implement unified command, it’s important to select a spokesperson to provide a designated channel of communications for command and general staff members. Realize that, contrary to the full authority that the incident commander has over most fire situations, the authority at a fire in a penal institution normally will be controlled by the warden or his/her designee. Strict adherence to the safety parameters that are established by the warden must be enforced to ensure the safety of firefighters, other responders and correctional officers.

The goals of life safety, incident stabilization and property conservation are foremost, as always, but recognize that life safety must consider the potential of injury to responders that could be inflicted upon them by the inmates. In addition to the warden or the designee, fire, state and local police also could be a part of the unified command structure. Under unified command, the operations section chief can be someone from the prison staff. If fire conditions exist, the operations section could include a deputy operations chief who is a fire officer.

The use of the ICS at a prison fire can resemble operations at a fire in a high-rise building. A base should be established on the exterior for the marshalling of equipment and personnel. The command post can be positioned on the exterior of the facility or in a safe location that’s within the prison proper. In either case, it should be spelled out in the EOP.

The designation of an operations section chief who will operate on the interior will allow better control of the situation, because he/she should have a better understanding of the problems that are presented by the incident. Ideally, a correctional officer who is assigned to the RIC should have a firefighter background that includes training in the use of SCBA.