CARACAS, Venezuela — Frantic families of victims clashed with police and were still demanding answers on Thursday after a blaze ripped through a Venezuelan police detention center the day before, killing at least 68 in one of the nation’s worst ever prison disasters.
Details of the incident were still emerging, but late Wednesday, the country’s head prosecutor Tarek William Saab confirmed the death count in a tweet and said four investigators had been appointed to “clarify these dramatic events.”
“The chief prosecutor’s office guarantees that we will clear up immediately these painful incidents that have left dozens of families mourning, as well as establish the needed responsibilities,” Saab tweeted.
These statements came long after the fire erupted in the detention cells of the police station in Valencia town in Carabobo state, around 100 miles west of the capital, leaving families of the inmates frantic with worry over the fate of their loved ones.
“Yesterday, the conflict started early and continued through the day, but until it was impossible to keep hiding what was happening, the government didn’t give any information at all about it,” said Juan Miguel Matheus, a local opposition lawmaker.
“Part of the drama is that there was no list of dead because many of the bodies were incinerated and it was impossible to recognize them,” he added.
The director of the nonprofit prison watchdog group, Windows for Freedom, said the fire began after an attempted jail break went sour and inmates set fire to their mattresses.
The prisoners immediately began to succumb to the massive amounts of smoke from the burning mattresses in the cramped cells.
“The fire caused so much smoke that people started to die in the enclosed space,” said Carlos Nieta Palma, adding that the detention center had capacity for 35 people yet there were 200 crammed in there.
[In Venezuela, prisoners say it is so bad they eat pasta mixed with excrement ]
He said that his sources told him that the deaths were all due to asphyxia from smoke inhalation and the two women among the dead were there on conjugal visits.
Heavily armed police ended up resorting to tear gas to drive back families demanding information about those held inside.
“I don’t know if my son is dead or alive,” Aida Parra, who said she had last seen her son the previous day, told the Spanish news agency EFE. “They haven’t told me anything.”
In video footage from the scene, one woman who identified herself as the mother of a prisoner railed against police: “What we want is justice. Corrupt police threw gasoline in there … We want justice, we want to know what is happening.”
The fire was one of the worst jail disasters in a country where human rights officials say that prison conditions are among the worst in Latin America. In 1994, a prison fire in the state of Zulia killed at least 100 prisoners. Last August, at least 37 inmates died in a riot in the southern state of Amazonas.
In a statement, the nonprofit watchdog Observatory of Prisons said: “We have been warning of the grave situation of police detention centers that put the lives and personal integrity of the detained at risk … The deaths have to be investigated to define responsibilities, we express our condolences to family members.”
Matheus, the lawmaker, said the tragedy highlighted the crisis in the country’s penal system since the lack of adequate prisons in the country meant inmates were often jammed into cramped detention centers in police stations — often for years while they await trial.
“People are in limbo there,” he said, promising to bring the matter up in the National Assembly when it met again on Tuesday.
Faiola reported from Miami.
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