EXPLOSIVE NEWS!
A lot has been going on since my last post so let’s dive right in… On April 30th, I was transferred to a new housing unit (32 WEST) here @ Santa Rita Jail. This is a medium security unit (as opposed to 34 EAST which was low security) that is used to house parole violators and, temporarily, federal inmates. It’s the same housing unit I was in after my arrest awaiting bail. The downside is that you lose some privileges in medium security, but it’s a lot more quiet so you can actually get some sleep. The upside is that I should only be here a couple weeks and then I’ll go to one of two local intake facilities for a few days and then fly Con-Air to Oklahoma where they have the central reception facility. I’m not sure how long I will be in OK but I don’t imagine it will be too long. From there I will go to my designated facility (which I currently do not know). So finally, I should be leaving the shithole that is Santa Rita Jail. Something to be happy about.
None of that is really blockbuster so let’s get to the explosion. That’s right, explosion. A few days before I left 34 EAST, @ around 3AM, THERE WAS AN EXPLOSION IN UPPER F POD. I was housed in lower E pod, basically next door. The sound was like a missile hitting the place. The culprit? Pruno. Pruno is like prison moonshine. In short, you take some fruit (we get oranges in our daily lunch) and you put it in a 20 oz. soda bottle and let it sit. The fruit starts to rot and then ferment. Then you add fruit juice and a lot of sugar and let the fermenting run its course. Needless to say, gas builds up in the bottle as a result and if you don’t drain the pressure… well… BOOM! I don’t exactly know how much pressure it takes for one of those bottles to fail or how much force is exerted when it blows, but it’s certainly loud. I know there are some videos on YouTube of people blowing up 2 litre bottles if you’re inclined to get an idea. I think the 20oz bottles can hold more pressure in my opinion. Anyway, some nimrod was making pruno and storing the bottle in his foot locker. He forgot to let out the pressure and, well, it went. On top of 20 ounces of half “cooked” fruit juice and orange scraps lining the inside of his locker, we received our commissary orders just a few hours before. The force of the blast enclosed in a small steel foot locker was enough to rupture every package in there and reduce much of the contents to dust and at the very least unusable.
My favorite part is the reaction of the deputy on duty. Again, this is a thunderous sound. If you set one off in, let’s say, a shopping mall, the entire place would be locked down and bomb squads brought in to search for more bombs, etc. Mass hysteria. So the bottle goes off. About 30 seconds later, the large steel sliding door to the entrance of 34 EAST crawls open and the deputy walks in from the watch tower about 30 feet. He visually scans all six pods, presumably looking for fire, smoke, or body parts and listening for screams of pain, terror, or at least “man down!”. When non of those materialized after a 10 second scan, he left.
I’m not sure what to make of that. I mean, no fire, no blood, I suppose there’s no problem, but if you could comprehend the sound of this thing, I just didn’t see how you can’t investigate. Anyway, the whole thing made for some good conversation over breakfast.
