Air-conditioning disrupted at Delco prison during weekend heat wave
Two units at George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Thornton were affected on Sunday, prison officials said.
A small number of inmates at the Delaware County prison, including some youth offenders, were affected by an air-conditioning outage on Sunday, which was the climax of an oppressive heat wave in the region, officials said Monday.
The outage was discovered at 12:30 p.m. at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Thornton, according to a statement issued by David Byrne, the prison’s administrator. Two air-conditioning units were affected: one that shut off Sunday in the medical unit and another that started working at a diminished capacity Saturday in the wing that houses youthful offenders and the Secure Management Unit, a type of solitary confinement.
A total of 28 inmates in the 1,800-bed facility were affected. They were provided with ice and water, allowed more time outside, and given time inside the prison’s air-conditioned gym until they could be relocated, according to Byrne. No injuries were reported.
“The facility again acted responsibly and removed the inmates from these two areas, relocating them to other areas of the jail,” Byrne said. “All inmates spent the night in air-conditioned quarters, and will remain there while repairs are finalized.”
The George W. Hill facility, built in the mid-1990s, is operated by GEO Group, the world’s largest private prison firm.
It was unclear what caused the outage, but Byrne said that the air-conditioning in the medical unit was restored by Sunday night, while the unit in the other wing had “more complex” issues and couldn’t be immediately fixed. As of Monday night, that unit was still being repaired.
Temperatures in the region peaked in the high 90s on Sunday, with a heat index that crept into the triple digits, according to data from the National Weather Service.
The outage was first reported by members of the Delaware County Coalition for Prison Reform, who call for increased oversight at the facility.
“For $50 million a year, you couldn’t go to Home Depot and rent an air-conditioning unit?” said Jane Dunbar, a member of the coalition, referring to the annual budget allotted to GEO through a contract signed with the county in December. “And there isn’t an emergency plan? This was the same situation with the water pipe in the winter.”
In October, a cracked sewer pipe cut off the water supply to parts of George W. Hill for 24 hours, preventing toilets in some cells from flushing.
“These things happen, I get it, but when these things happen in my house, we have plans and we handle it,” Dunbar said. “You’re responsible for 2,000 people here. How do you not have a plan in place?”
Officials from GEO said Monday that there is such a protocol, and that it was followed during the outage. Much of the logistics involved finding a secure way to move the prisoners to alternate areas, officials said.
Robert DiOrio, the solicitor for the county prison board, said the air-conditioning units affected by the outage had no previous problems.
He said all 120 air-conditioning units at the prison are inspected every quarter by Elliot Lewis, a contractor hired by GEO that performed the repairs Sunday. GEO will pay for those repairs, DiOrio said.