Prison fires

摘要

On reading the news story in the June about the prison in Chile, in which ten inmates died, I was minded to prepare this short note on other prison fires. In April 1930, there was a fire in a penitentiary in the US state of Ohio, which claimed the lives of 322 prisoners. The blaze began when a candle was brought into contact with some cleaning rags which had absorbed a flammable liquid. The penitentiary housed twice the number of occupants that it was built to hold.