A state prison in Colorado has been evacuated for more than two weeks because of a wildfire.
As the Lee Fire approached the Rifle Correctional Center on Aug. 9, the Colorado Department of Corrections began evacuating the 179 people in custody, following the facility's emergency plan. By 10:30 p.m. that night, everyone had been moved to the Buena Vista Correctional Complex several hours away.
“This proactive measure was taken out of an abundance of caution to ensure the safety of all individuals involved,” a news release said.
The Lee Fire, which was sparked by a lightning strike on Aug. 2, quickly spread among dry fuels pushed by high winds. At more 138,000 acres, it’s now the fourth-largest wildfire in Colorado state history. Rains have helped slow the spread, allowing firefighters to contain about 90% of the perimeter.
On Monday, a Department of Corrections spokesperson said they didn’t have a timeframe available for ending the evacuation of the prison, a minimum-security facility in Garfield County.
After the transfer, the Department said medical staff were on site and had reported no injuries. It said incarcerated people would still be able to communicate with family members and loved ones through tablets and phones.
“It is a relief that people incarcerated at Rifle Correctional Center were evacuated and given a way to communicate with family," wrote Phaedra Pezzullo in an email.
Pezzullo is a professor in the Department of Communication at CU Boulder who is part of a research team examining the effects of climate change on incarcerated people. A study that she co-authored last year identified only two other cases of prison evacuations in Colorado due to natural disasters: the Territorial Correctional Facility in 2013 because of a wildfire and the Delta Correctional Center in 2023 because of flood risk.
Elsewhere, criminal justice advocates have raised concerns when prisons and jails did not evacuate during disasters. During a wildfire in Los Angeles in January, for example, a large prison moved inmates to a more secure building within the complex, but did not evacuate, despite being within a mandatory evacuation zone, the Los Angeles Times reported.
More vulnerable with climate change
The inability to choose how to respond to a disaster is one factor that makes incarcerated people more vulnerable, said Shideh Dashti, a civil engineering professor at CU Boulder, and a co-author of the research with Pezzullo.
“What is it that gives us power or resilience during an extreme event? One of the first things that we want to be able to do is to get out of that space,” she said.
In a separate paper published in 2023, the team found that 75% of prisons and jails in Colorado had moderate or high exposure to wildfires, floods, extreme temperatures or landslides.
“The exposure alone tells us that we need to pay attention to these facilities,” Dashti said. “With climate change and the increased frequency and intensity of some of these climatic hazards, there's just a higher likelihood that they would be exposed to these circumstances more.”
But, she said, many prisons may not be equipped to deal with climate disasters.
When it comes to heat, a recent analysis by Reuters found nearly half of state prisons in 29 states have partial or no air conditioning in housing units. Not all states shared data in response to public records requests, but those that did included Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by CPB.
