Crowded Middlesex jail evacuated due to vandalism - The Boston Globe

Crowded Middlesex jail evacuated due to vandalism - The Boston Globe

CAMBRIDGE - Prisoners at the long-overcrowded Middlesex Jail were evacuated to four other facilities in and around Boston yesterday after nine detainees smashed and ripped apart the fire suppression system, causing massive flooding, according to the Middlesex County sheriff.

“Some of the inmates started acting out, throwing paper and trash,’’ Sheriff James V. DiPaola said during a press conference late yesterday afternoon at a command center set up a few blocks from the jail on Thorndike Street in East Cambridge. At about 11:30 a.m. the prisoners allegedly began smashing sprinkler heads and tearing down piping.



The nine prisoners were placed in solitary cells and could face further criminal charges, he said.

The flooding began on the 18th floor of the high-rise building near the CambridgeSide Galleria and drenched every floor down to the lobby, officials said. Cascading water disabled the building’s elevators, so guards and prisoners alike had to use the stairs.

Officials from the Cambridge Fire Department and NStar asked the sheriff’s office to turn off the building’s power, DiPaola said, and officials began evacuating the detainees at midday yesterday. Generators were trucked in but could not meet the jail’s full power needs, DiPaola said. Officials had no estimate of the cost of the damage.

Authorities put 187 detainees charged with the most serious crimes onto buses and transported them to jails in Billerica, Middleton, Dedham, and Boston, DiPaola said.

The vandalism occurred after 15 prisoners reported having a flu-like illness yesterday morning. As jail officials were transporting them to hospitals and sanitizing the building, several other prisoners “got upset’’ and started to act unruly, DiPaola said.

Last Tuesday, one detainee had flu-like symptoms that doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital later said was probably H1N1 influenza, so when the prisoners became ill yesterday, officials were particularly concerned and moved them to a quarantined unit, where they were treated with Tamiflu, DiPaola said.

Doctors later said none of those prisoners had contracted that strain of the disease.

“There is no grave danger of pandemic happening in this facility,’’ DiPaola said. “It’s the flu.’’

The jail was built in the early 1970s to hold as many 160 prisoners awaiting trial, but yesterday 403 were being held, DiPaola said.

The jail occupies the 17th through 22d floors of the building, which is otherwise empty. In 2008, administrative and court offices were moved out after unsafe levels of asbestos were found in the building, DiPaola said.

Attempts to move the jail to another location have stalled for years because of a lack of funds.

DiPaola, who for more than a decade has been asking the state for money to improve conditions inside the jail, said the tight quarters probably exacerbated the already tense situation.

“I think absolutely the overcrowding of the institution is the impetus for them to raise their concern levels,’’ DiPaola said. “We have a lot of people living on top of each other here.’’

Last spring, during a tour of the jail - which at the time housed 427 people - DiPaolo called overcrowding a “consistent issue’’ that has plagued his 12-year tenure as sheriff. Prisoners are not only packed tightly into cells, but also sleep in corridors, a recreation center, and a chapel.

The jail has been evacuated twice before, DiPaola said: once on Sept. 11, 2001, when Acting Governor Jane Swift ordered all courthouses and high-rise buildings evacuated because of the terrorist attacks, and again about three years ago when asbestos was discovered in the building.

Neighbors in the largely residential area said the jail poses no serious problems. One woman said firefighters sometimes have to respond to small fires started in the building, and another man said the detainees can become loud on hot summer days when windows are open during televised sporting events. The neighbors declined to be identified.

Yesterday, three women who had planned to visit a detainee waited outside as scores of officials - some carrying assault weapons or billy clubs - stood guard.

Xiomara Cruz, 23, of Lowell, whose husband is being held inside the jail as he awaits trial, had come from Logan Airport, where she had picked up her mother-in-law, Maria Martell, and sister-in-law, Katherine Avarado, who had flown in from Puerto Rico.

They said they had not received any information about what was going on inside the jail except that visiting hours, which run weekend nights from 6 to 9, had been canceled.

“We got to the parking lot and we didn’t know what was happening,’’ said Cruz. “We’re just worried - we want to know what’s going on.’’