More than half the female inmates at the York County Prison had to be taken to the hospital yesterday due to carbon monoxide poisoning, while that entire wing of the prison was evacuated.
Carbon monoxide, it’s a dangerous and potentially fatal gas. And the York County Prison – according to a local fire chief - did not have detectors to alert them that the gas was building up. What alerted them, was when the inmates started getting sick.
The female inmates at the York County Prison were not allowed to talk to us today out their experience yesterday. Last night, nearly 50 of them were taken to the hospital for carbon monoxide poisoning.
Chief Daniel Hoff, of the York Area United Fire and Rescue, said “The prison is a big, big building with a lot of small pockets here and there. So it had to be systematically ventilated. You couldn’t just open the door up and let everything out.” Hoff says the prison water heater released the CO and it wasn’t properly ventilated and he said the prison did not have CO detectors. So when a lot of the women started getting flu-like symptoms they called for help, which at first was thought to be a propane leak. But when emergency officials arrived they detected the CO; an odorless, colorless gas that can be deadly if too much is ingested. “Very, very high levels of CO, over a 100 parts per million when we first went in," he said. "Our detection equipment starts at 25 parts per million. So, yeah, that's considerable."
The chief said when the levels returned to normal, the inmates were allowed back in. The warden of the prison told a local newspaper, that all the women inmates should recover.