What happens if a wildfire reaches a Supermax prison?

The ADX Florence Supermax prison was built to make sure nothing gets out. This week, officials are more worried about something getting in.

The 37-acre prison hosts some of the country’s most dangerous and notorious criminals. It’s now about 10 miles north of the Aspen Acres fire currently raging through Pueblo and Custer counties.

As of July 8, the 96,000-acre fire was slowly creeping northwest, right toward the ADX facility in Fremont County, where evacuation orders have been issued for several residential areas.

Right now, the prison doesn’t plan to move the prisoners, which include notorious figures like drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover and other convicted hitmen, terrorists and foreign military leaders. Instead, the prison is on a shelter-in-place protocol, canceling all visitation for the time being, according to Scott Taylor, spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

Who knew supermax inmates were allowed visitations, anyway?

ADX Florence, often called “the Alcatraz of the Rockies,” was constructed in 1994 and is said to be the most secure prison in the country. It is the only supermax in the states — and the only prison where all inmates are locked in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. Since its creation, there’s never been a reported escape.

Currently, the prison has 405 inmates, including Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, and Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber” of 2001. (But don’t worry, they’re safe.)

Due to the facility’s high-security nature, there’s a substantial concrete wall surrounding most of it, serving as a buffer if a fire moves in that direction. If the fire were to move into the prison’s premises, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has a protocol in place, although Taylor would not provide details.

“Every BOP facility, including FCC Florence, has contingency plans in place to address a large range of concerns or incidents, including natural disasters, and is fully equipped and prepared to implement these plans as necessary. For safety and security reasons, the Bureau of Prisons’ contingency plans are sensitive and not available to the public,” Taylor tells Westword.

Does that mean the prisoners would be moved in a “Con Air“-esque scenario? Becasue we’ve all seen how that movie turns out…