Heat Partially Restored To Nashville Prison

NASHVILLE, TN -- Heat is back on in portions of a Tennessee prison that lost its boiler during the weekend's dangerous cold snap.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said that Riverbend Maximum Security Institution's boiler is once again producing hot water and heat to portions of the 28-year-old prison northwest of downtown Nashville. TDOC expects heat to be restored to the entire facility within 48 hours.

A department spokesperson told The Tennessean she believed about half of the prison's 320,000 square feet had heat as of Wednesday morning.

The Department of Correction announced Tuesday that an emergency plan had been implemented inside the prison, which houses Tennessee's only death row, with blankets and temporary heating distributed to the inmates. The prison's inmate population was 787 at the end of November, according to state figures.

Initially, state officials could not offer a timeline for repairs as they investigated what caused the boiler to fail when temperatures plunged into the single digits. Now, they believe a valve failure led to the busted boiler.

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