Fire at overcrowded Indonesian prison kills at least 41 people, injures 80
- The prison housed more than 2,000 inmates, far more than its capacity of 600 people, according to government data
- Prisons in Indonesia are notoriously overcrowded, partly due to the emphasis on incarceration for drug-related offences
The fire, the country’s most deadly since 47 perished in a firework factory disaster in 2017, broke out at 1.45am in a Tangerang Prison block, Indonesian law and human rights minister Yasonna Laoly said 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.
“This is a tragedy that concerns all of us,” Laoly later told reporters. “We are working closely with all relevant parties to investigate the causes of the fire.”
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Fire at overcrowded prison in Indonesia kills at least 41, injures 80
The minister said two of the dead were foreign nationals serving drug sentences, 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.
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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 said some of the bodies had been so badly burned they were unidentifiable.
“The initial suspicion is this was because of an electrical short circuit,” police spokesman Yusri Yunus told the broadcaster.
Metro TV cited a police report saying that 73 people also had suffered light injuries.
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.
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“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.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
