The first witness giving evidence before the Commission of Inquiry looking into last week’s deadly Georgetown Prison unrest, testified that no attempts were made by prison officers to open the door to the section where the fire had been started and to put out the fire.

However, video recordings expected to be presented to the Commission will completely contradict that prisoner’s testimony.

Before the fire even started, as the prison officers were moving prisoners out of the area, one prison officer was reportedly put in charge of making a video diary of the operations. The officer never stopped his recording for more than an hour.

News Source was able to see the video recording and it shows that the door to the Capital A section of the prison was closed before the fire started and was in response to inmates rushing out of the area after another inmate was accosted and taken away by prison officers. They were all being moved from the section at the time.

Based on the video recording, the fire first started in the Capital B section of the prison and the Officer in Charge of the Prison and the Deputy Director of the Prison could be seen charging towards that section with other prison officers and getting prisoners out while they extinguished the blaze with hand held fire extinguishers.

By the time that fire was put out and those prisoners were taken downstairs, some of the prison officers started to move out from the area which was still engulfed with smoke, when they noticed more smoke coming from the Capital A section.

The video recording captures the moment when prison officers hurried over to that section of the prison and made a number of attempts with the keys to open the door. Loud noises could be heard coming from the inside as the fire engulfed that section of the jail house and the prison officers were trying just about everything to open the door as the keys appeared not to be doing the job.

At one stage, a prison officer dressed in a blue shirt could be seen racing towards the door with an electric steel cutter and making several attempts to cut through the metal door.

The door was eventually opened and some prisoners managed to make their way out as the attempts continued to put out the blaze. The Fire Service had not yet arrived on the scene and it was the prison’s fire service and the hand held fire extinguishers that were being used.

News Source understands that prison officials intend to submit the video recording as evidence in the case since it shows the lead up to the fire during the unrest, the action of the prison officers and the prisoners and the attempts by the officers to open the doors and get all prisoners out.

(Photo is a screen grab of the video recording showing the officers attempting to cut through the metal door)

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