• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Fire in Indonesia prison kills 41 in block crowded to more than 3 times capacity

September 8, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 8, 2021

By Yuddy Cahya Budiman and Stanley Widianto

TANGERANG, Indonesia (Reuters) -A fire killed 41 inmates in an overcrowded prison block in Indonesia’s Banten province, a government minister said on Wednesday, injuring scores more in a blaze that police said may have been caused by an electrical fault.

The fire, the country’s most deadly since 47 perished in a firework factory disaster in 2017, broke out at 1.45 a.m. local time in a Tangerang Prison block, said Indonesian law and human rights minister Yasonna Laoly, after visiting the scene.

“We’re working together with relevant authorities to look into the causes of the fire and of course formulating prevention strategies so that severe catastrophes like this won’t happen again,” the minister said in a statement.

The minister said two of the dead were foreign nationals, one each from South Africa and Portugal, and confirmed the prison was operating in overcapacity when the fire broke out. Cells were locked at the time, the minister said, but with the fire raging uncontrollably, “some rooms couldn’t be opened.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Rika Aprianti, a spokeswoman for the ministry’s prison department, said 122 were being detained on drug-related offences in a block built to hold 38.

Rika said all 41 fatalities were inmates, adding authorities were still evacuating the facility as of 9.00 a.m. local time.

Prisons in Indonesia are notoriously overcrowded, with experts saying the phenomenon is partly due to the emphasis on incarceration rather than rehabilitation of those convicted of drug-related offences under the country’s strict narcotics laws.

On Wednesday morning local TV showed footage of flames engulfing the detention facility, and later, the building’s charred remains as victims were pulled from the scene in orange body bags.

Dr. Hilwani from Tangerang General Hospital told Reuters that some of the bodies had been so badly burned they were unidentifiable.

Metro TV cited a police report saying that 73 people also had suffered light injuries. “The initial suspicion is this was because of an electrical short circuit,” police spokesman Yusri Yunus told the broadcaster.

The electrical wiring at the prison had not been upgraded since 1972 when the prison was built, minister Yasonna told Wednesday’s briefing.

The prison in Tangerang, an industrial and manufacturing hub on the outskirts of Jakarta, housed more than 2,000 inmates in total, far exceeding its 600 capacity, according to government data as of September.

Leopold Sudaryono, a criminologist and PhD candidate at the Australian National University, said that overcrowding also complicated emergency evacuation efforts.

“At the Tangerang prison there are only five guards working one shift to guard a prison with 2,079 people” he said. “So fire detection efforts and evacuations are difficult.”

The head of the prison was not immediately available for comment on the ratio of inmates to guards, nor the capacity of the facility. Prison department spokeswoman Rika told local media that 13 guards had been on duty at the facility at the time of the blaze.

There have been several deadly fires in Indonesia in recent years. As well as the 2017 Tangerang fireworks factory blaze, a 2019 fire at a matchstick factory in North Sumatra killed 30 people.

(Additional reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa, Fransiska Nangoy and Johan Purnomo; Writing by Gayatri Suroyo and Kate Lamb; Editing by Ed Davies and and Kenneth Maxwell)

Source Link Fire in Indonesia prison kills 41 in block crowded to more than 3 times capacity

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. Best WordPress hosting of 2021
  2. Inflation shock and ECB hawks keep euro near 1-month high
  3. Soccer-Ronaldo claims world record with late late show
  4. U.N. warns catastrophe looms in Ethiopia’s north, urges government to end de facto aid blockade

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • 2024-25 Saw The Most US Kids Dying From Flu Since The Swine Flu Pandemic
  • Technology, Tactics, Or Just Toughing It Out: How Exactly Did Neanderthals Take Down Mammoths, Anyway?
  • Nobel Prize In Chemistry Awarded For New Material Breakthrough
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be A 10-Billion-Year-Old Time Capsule From An Earlier Age Of The Universe
  • Restless Leg Syndrome Might Increase Someone’s Risk Of Parkinson’s Disease
  • Behold! The World’s First Butt-Drag Fossil, Committed By A Rock Hyrax 126,000 Years Ago
  • Norovirus Is Rife On US Cruise Ships – 2025 Hits 18-Year Outbreak High
  • New Species Of Tiny Glowing Lanternshark And Ghost-Like Crab Discovered In Deep Sea
  • Hairy Frog: The Wolverine Frog That Breaks Its Bones To Make Claws When Threatened
  • Move Over, Footballfish – This Deep-Sea Freak Might Just Be The Most Cursed Creature In The Ocean
  • The Strongest Magnetic Field On Earth Is Located In The US. It Measures 1,000,000 Gauss
  • Gold Literally Grows On Christmas Trees In Lapland
  • Meet The Fishing Spiders: Stealthy, Semi-Aquatic Hunters That Can Kill Prey 5 Times Their Size
  • Jupiter-Bound Mission To Snap Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS: “This Campaign Was Unexpected For Everybody”
  • 432 Hz Or 440 Hz? The Conspiracy Theory That All The World’s Instruments Are Tuned Wrong
  • “It Smells Really Bad”: Ancient Life Frozen In Alaska For 40,000 Years Has Been Woken Up
  • China Is Building The First “AI-Powered” Data Center In Space –Why?
  • Macroscopic Quantum Mechanics Discoverers Win Nobel Prize in Physics
  • How Much Of The Sun’s Radiation Is At Wavelengths We Can See?
  • Alcohol And Dementia Risk: There Is No Safe Level Of Drinking
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version