During Recent Heat Wave, Prisoners Confined to Cells in San Diego County

Here are the morning’s top stories on Monday, October 12, 2026

• At the height of the summer heat wave last month, Donovan State Prison in San Diego County went into lockdown. Several incarcerated people say officials at the prison confined them to their cells even as temperatures soared indoors. It highlights a statewide crisis and advocates and lawmakers have been sounding the alarm for years. 
• More than a dozen homes in Long Beach have been red-tagged after Tropical Storm Rachel battered the Southern California Coast over the weekend.

Through the window of his cell, Lonnie Kocontes could see the fans blowing, but all he felt was the heat bearing down. It was early September, and the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa had been on lockdown that morning. According to Kocontes, he and the other incarcerated people in his housing area couldn’t leave their cells. “It’s stifling and it’s frustrating,” said Kocontes, 68, during a recent phone call with KPBS. “If you’re on lockdown, you can’t do anything.”

Last month’s heat wave sent temperatures soaring inside the state prison, according to three incarcerated people who spoke to KPBS. Amid the brutally hot weather, they said, prison officials also imposed lockdowns for multiple days — restricting access to large fans, ice water and other ways to stay cool.

Advocates and civil rights attorneys said the accounts from inside Donovan highlight the urgent need for California prison officials to better protect incarcerated people from high temperatures — especially as climate change is expected to fuel more frequent and intense heat waves. “This goes far beyond discomfort,” said Lily Harvey, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Prison Law Office in Berkeley. “People are really suffering, and they’re scared.”

A spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or CDCR, confirmed that Donovan officials locked down parts of the prison during the heat wave. In an email to KPBS, CDCR spokesperson Mary Xjimenez said prison officials imposed the lockdowns because of “security concerns” but continued to follow department heat safety protocols.

Donovan is one of eight state prisons that are especially vulnerable to climate change, according to a 2023 report by the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Extreme heat events top the list of those climate risks for incarcerated people, said Eric Henderson, the center’s policy director and a co-author of the report. “This is one of these events that almost everyone universally experiences in the prison system,” Henderson said.

California’s prison system is aging. The state’s prisons are 50 years old on average, with some of them dating as far back as the Gold Rush. Donovan state prison is about 40 years old. Many facilities were built from concrete and other materials that don’t keep out heat or cold. Less than a quarter have traditional air conditioning. CDCR is supposed to keep track of how hot and cold it gets at each facility, but there are few standards for when and where to measure those temperatures. Inside, incarcerated people don’t have open access to cooling measures like ice water and air conditioning, said Matt Cate, a former inspector general who oversaw the state prison system. Instead, he said they rely entirely on prison officials to protect them.

Tropical Storm Rachel brought dangerous surf to Long Beach’s oceanfront but little of the rain forecasters had warned about, as conditions are expected to gradually improve through Tuesday. While relieved, city officials reiterate that the Peninsula is far from in the clear, with major cleanup and emergency repairs underway as several seaside homes are still too dangerous to reenter.

The Peninsula was inundated with mud and sand, The coast also had splintered timber bulkhead and boardwalk. With waves and tides high but not quite at levels seen Saturday, crews pumped out excess water in the streets and shoveled sand and debris out of the storm drains.

Inspectors have red-tagged nine buildings across 13 addresses, a designation meaning they are unsafe to enter. One building has a yellow tag, which restricts use. A mandatory evacuation order covering homes between 64th and 66th places runs through noon Tuesday, and 39 more residences are under an evacuation warning.