Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said Friday that five of the nine fatalities were patients at the psychiatric ward.
Advertisement
The blaze on Thursday was the second in two years to hit the Leyte Regional Prison in Leyte province, Bureau of Corrections spokesperson Roberto Olaguer said.
The fire raged for almost eight hours, gutting one prison building, and was finally brought under control around midnight (1600 GMT), said Inspector Constantino Pedrosa, deputy police chief of Abuyog town where the prison was located.
Fire investigators were unable to identify the dead since they were burned beyond recognition.
The fire at the Maximum Security Compound broke out at around 4 p.m. and was put out by 10:49 p.m. Thursday.
“Among my instructions is fully secure the area, attend to the needs of the affected inmates, i.e., food, clothing, temporary shelter, other emergency needs, like flashlights, medicines, etc., and search for missing inmates, if any”, she said.
However, after the fire, Nalda said prison authorities found that there were 11 inmates missing.
PNA quoted the country’s fire bureau as saying faulty electrical wiring was the probable cause of the blaze that burnt down several buildings in the compound and razed the prison hospital. He said the facility was built for 500 inmates, but held 1,256 prisoners, a common occurrence in the Philippine’s mostly overcrowded prison system.
Advertisement
The Abuyog Penal Colony is one of the seven operating units under the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor).
