"It's cold as hell": In the week-long collapse of Brooklyn Prison



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Another inmate, Donnell Murray, will be remembered later, in a message to his fiancée, "The fire alarm went off and I could smell the smoke, and we were immediately locked in our cells."

Then the prison has calmed down.

The Bureau of Prisons said Quay had informed Washington of "the initial fire and the events that followed." The office did not specify when this had been done or what he had done in response.

Many inmates said that after the fire, the lights went out and they were locked in their cells until 23 hours a day, a closure usually imposed in case of a fire. emergency to ensure the safety of the personnel. When asked how many days he had been locked up, a fourth-floor inmate stated that he thought he had spent three consecutive days before being released, but he had become confused in his dark cell.

"I did not know what time and what day you lost everything," said the man, who asked that his name not be used for fear of retaliation, during a phone interview.

The cold air blown through a vent on his bunk. He tried to block it with a book cover. He was lying listening to a battery-powered radio, wrapped in three blankets, he said, until a caretaker saw that he had an extra blanket and took it off. .

Nevertheless, he was more worried about his cellmate, who was suffering from seizures and was not receiving his usual medications. Prison computers used to request prescription renewals were down, as was the monitored telephone system used by inmates to call their families. A line connecting the prison to the offices of the local federal defenders was operating however, and when they were briefly released, the detainees began calling the lawyers.

"They look really scared," said Deirdre von Dornum, who heads the Federal Defenders Office in Brooklyn on Jan. 31. She said the number of calls reached its peak that day when temperatures dropped to 2 degrees.

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