The North Carolina prison system has safely returned around 220 minimum custody offenders who had been evacuated Monday night/Tuesday morning from the Forsyth Correctional Center in Winston-Salem due to a fire at a nearby plant.
In the meantime, they were housed at the Alexander Correctional Center in Taylorsville, around 60 miles away.
The return operation was completed without major incident today, Feb. 4.
Emergency management officials in Winston-Salem cleared the return of staff and offenders to Forsyth Correctional, after lifting the one-mile evacuation zone and reducing the evacuated area to 660 feet from the plant. Because Forsyth Correctional Center is well outside that new radius, the repopulation of the prison was permitted.
As an additional precaution, the prison passed safety, air quality and maintenance inspections done by Prisons' maintenance staff before offenders were returned to the facility.