Hope this resolves safely with no staff injuries.

Here is additional information: Officer attacked with pipe during Ridgeville prison riot - Charleston, SC | News, Sports, Weather

Posted: Jan 19, 2012 4:55 PM EST
Updated: Jan 19, 2012 6:17 PM EST

RIDGEVILLE, S.C. (WCIV) – Lieber Correctional Institution houses some of the state's most dangerous criminal offenders. Late Wednesday night, inmates broke into a riot, physically attacking two prison guards and destroying much of the dorm.

"Offenders took some keys to the facility from the officers and some radios and just kind of dispersed through the building. When that happened, we of course went into emergency mode," said Clark Newsom, communications director for the South Carolina Department of Corrections.

Newsom says the inmates were on work detail in the Ashley dorm when the attack happened. The dorm houses approximately 229 inmates.

"They did a pretty good number on the dorm," Newsom said. "A lot of sprinklers broken, toilets broken up, glass everywhere, quite a bit of damage."

At least 10 local law enforcement agencies responded to the incident. One guard was hit with a pipe. Both were taken to an area hospital and treated for minor injuries.

"You're talking about two against 220. And, if some sort of opportunity comes about, something can happen," Newsom said.

Although it may seem unpractical, it is normal for there to be only two guards overseeing the dorm during nighttime hours.

"Of course, we're like a lot of state agencies. Our funding is, you know, has been cut back over the years. And, we've had to kind of go with the times, just like everybody else has," Newsom said.

Lieber Correctional has been the scene of many violent acts in the past, including multiple stabbings and strangulations.

"When you are dealing with the type of inmate that we have here, you're going to have some problems," said Newsom. "We would love to have to say that we've had no incidents like that but, there's no prison in this country where you don't have some action like this happen from time to time."

Officials have not yet found how many inmates were involved or what sparked the riot.

Newsom says the inmates involved will face disciplinary action but, did not give specifics.

I just found this as well: RIDGEVILLE | At least 2 officers injured in SC prison riot | The Herald - Rock Hill, SC
It is a much more comprehensive article. Looks like two officers were wounded in the disturbance, and two more suffered "hypothermia type" conditions while cleaning up afterwards.

At least 2 officers injured in SC prison riot
By Andrew Knapp and Glenn Smith RIDGEVILLE -- The only two correctional officers standing watch at a Ridgeville prison dormitory that houses 229 of the state's most egregious offenders were injured Wednesday night after inmates lashed out and set off a five-hour riot.
Current and former S.C. Department of Corrections officials said violence is commonplace at Lieber Correctional Institution's Ashley dorm, which contains criminals facing lengthy sentences. The dorm had been on lockdown Wednesday night after "several incidents of violence" in recent weeks, department spokesman Clark Newsom said.
Newsom said six serious assaults, including two homicides, occurred in the prison over the past five years. But the revolt that ended early Thursday when special forces barged in amid a haze of tear gas was of greater proportions than any incident since the prison opened in 1986, officials said.
"It's a maximum-security prison, so it's not unusual to have this violence from time to time," Newsom said. "We have the worst of the worst. There's some pretty bad behavior."
Throughout the entire facility that houses about 1,500 inmates, 27 guards were on duty at the time the riot started about 10:30 p.m. But at its conclusion, 200 officers from a dozen tri-county police agencies had surrounded the campus, ensuring that "at no point was the public in danger," Newsom said.
"Unfortunately, (the staffing level) is average," Newsom said. "It is what it is."
The riot
Newsom didn't know what precipitated the disturbance but said officials were investigating several reports, including one that inmates were disgruntled about being fed bologna.
To blame, he said, was an unknown number of inmates who had been handing out bedding for the night. They first beat the two correctional officers with a pipe, then stole their keys and radios, he said.
They dispersed throughout the A and B wings of the Ashley dorm, smashing windows, trashing common areas and offices, and setting off water sprinklers while seeking places to hide. Some rooms filled with 3 feet of water before workers could shut off the flow.
After electricity to the dorm was severed, a force specially trained to handle prison uprisings shot tear gas into the building and later recaptured the inmates.
The suspects' names and potential criminal charges or punishments had not been determined. All had been returned to their cells, which were undamaged, Newsom said.
The injuries to the two overpowered correctional officers were minor, Newsom said.
After the takedown, another officer was transported by ambulance to Trident Medical Center with a wound that "didn't appear to be life-threatening," said Doug Warren, director of Dorchester County Emergency Medical Services.
On a night of near-freezing temperatures, two other officers suffered hypothermia-like conditions as they cleared the water that flooded the dorm.
Endemic violence
Stan Burtt, a former warden at Lieber who retired in 2007 and now works in a faith-based prison ministry, said Lieber has had problems recruiting and retaining officers, an issue that's "endemic" at the most violent facilities.
He said that since budget cuts in the late 1990s, it wasn't uncommon for only two officers to staff the Ashley dorm. "It's a low number" for a maximum-security facility, Burtt said. Staffing levels have fallen by a half in the past decade and he advocated that more manpower be dedicated to violent offenders over lower-risk inmates.
"People look at all inmates as the same," Burtt said. "But an ax murderer who's insane is different from a guy who writes bad checks at Walmart once in a while."
Lieber, located in a rural corner of Ridgeville between S.C. 78 and S.C. 27, has been the scene of two slayings in recent years.
In September 2010, 72-year-old Saverio Piazzola was strangled in his cell while serving a 10-year sentence for criminal sexual conduct with a minor.
In August 2006, 19-year-old James Belli was killed when another prisoner repeatedly plunged a homemade shank into his neck. Now, after reports of corruption, a federal grand jury is said to be investigating the goings-on at Lieber at the time of Belli's death.
Ron Burris spent more than four years in Lieber, serving time for an infamous 1999 car chase that ended when he was shot 13 times by police in West Ashley. Burris turned his life around and has returned to Lieber to counsel inmates.
Burris said he wasn't surprised by the violence in the Ashley dorm, given the conditions inmates live in. They spend all but an hour or two of their days locked in their cells, he said. Cutbacks also have reduced recreational and vocational opportunities.
"It creates such a hostile environment," Burris said. "When you have that, things like this are going to happen."

I grew up a few miles from lieber, and it's still a scary thought that it happened so close to home.

Glad that there weren't any serious injuries to staff, it could have easily been much, much worse. It is insane to have staffing levels that low, even at night in a dorm that is known for violence...

Another update: No added staffing planned after prison riot - Crime & Courts - TheState.com

Originally Posted by TopCopsSis

Another update: No added staffing planned after prison riot - Crime & Courts - TheState.com

This doesn't surpirse me at all.

Here is another update.

Future Lieber uprisings foreseen | The Post and Courier - Charleston, South Carolina

Solitary guards supervising hundreds of inmates. Prisoners armed with homemade weapons and contraband cellphones. Inmates driven to rage by extended lockdowns.

This is the world Scott Jones confronted daily as a correctional officer at Lieber state prison in Ridgeville.

Over a dozen years, Jones said, he watched as budget cuts ate away at manpower and equipment, compromising safety in the maximum-security prison. And he saw how decisions made by folks far away from this rural outpost made life more difficult for those who live and work behind its razor-wired fences.

Sensing a powder keg ready to explode, Jones quit his job last month, determined to speak out about problems at the prison. Just a week later, a riot broke out at Lieber as pipe-wielding inmates attacked greatly outnumbered guards and took over a dorm for five hours.

Jones, a 40-year-old former sergeant, said he wasn't surprised by the melee. In fact, he expects more trouble as long as the conditions at Lieber persist and inmates remain locked down for 23 hours a day.

"It's like with an animal," he said, shaking his head. "If you keep it

caged up, it's going to get mean. And it's going to get violent."

Corrections Department officials said Jones was good at his job, and they don't dispute many of his descriptions of life at Lieber. The department is very concerned about the safety of its officers and inmates, agency spokesman Clark Newsom said, but there is just no money to hire more personnel and expand programs in the state's prisons.

"By its very nature, it's a tough job," he said. "Even if you have a full force of officers, you still have the possibility of problems. (Lieber) is a maximum-security prison, and you have some very tough characters there."

'House of Pain'

Jones, a Summerville resident who now runs his own pressure-washing company, applied for a correctional job thinking it would be a good steppingstone toward a career in law enforcement. He grew to like the job and the people he worked with. He stayed on, earning promotions and serving on the prison's equivalent of a SWAT team.

But things changed as budget cuts took their toll on the prison system, which ran a $30 million deficit last year just to keep its facilities operating. The prison system's 23,000 inmates now outnumber their guards by a nearly 6-to-1 ratio.

Jones worked in the Ashley dorm, where the riot occurred. Officers called the unit "The House of Pain," a violent wing full of murderers, rapists, robbers and the like. People have died there, including 19-year-old James Belli of Summerville, who was shanked in the neck by a fellow inmate in 2006.

Jones said that due to understaffing, it is not uncommon for officers in this environment to find themselves working alone at night on a wing full of violent offenders. These officers have to enter three-man cells armed with nothing more than a radio, keys and pepper spray, he said.

"If I have to fight them, I'm only going to be able to do that for so long," Jones said. "Sooner or later, they're going to get the advantage on me."

On the night of the riot, prison officials said, two officers were keeping watch over a dorm with 229 hard-core offenders inside when they were beaten with a pipe and overpowered.

Jones said the steel pipe likely was a desk leg that had been broken off and fashioned into a weapon, which has happened several times in the past. He said he was involved in an incident several months back in which an inmate used such a pipe to attack a team of officers who had come to remove him from his cell.

The inmate used the pipe to break one officer's protective shield, then clubbed a sergeant whose helmet fell off in the fracas, Jones said.

Breaching security

Homemade weapons are common inside the prison, as are illegal cellphones. Inmates get friends or family on the outside to toss phones, marijuana and tobacco over the prison fences in trash bags, hollowed-out foam footballs or other projectiles. "We've even found camouflage bolt cutters in the grass," he said.

The accomplices often are aided by the inmates themselves, who use contraband phones to notify them when guards on perimeter patrols have passed by, Jones said.

In the late 1990s, Lieber had four officers patrolling the perimeter and a watchtower where guards could survey the landscape, Jones said. Now there is just one person roving the perimeter.

Some 15 video cameras were installed to compensate for the reduced personnel, but there is often just one person in the control room to monitor the cameras while also answering phones, opening and shutting doors, and handling other tasks, he said.

"Even if they're watching, the camera's not going to climb off the pole and catch somebody," he said.

Jones and prison officials agree that cellphones are a major menace inside Lieber and other facilities, but the correctional system hasn't found an effective way to weed them out. In 2010 alone, some 2,000 cellphones were seized from the state's prisons.

The Post and Courier last year discovered dozens of state and federal inmates apparently using contraband phones to maintain Facebook and Myspace pages.

No solution in sight

About a half-dozen people identifying themselves as Lieber inmates called The Post and Courier on contraband cellphones after the riot to complain about conditions at the prison and to dispute official accounts of what occurred.

One caller, who wouldn't give his name, described himself as a convicted murderer serving a 22-year sentence. He said getting illegal phones is easy as long as an inmate or a friend on the outside can come up with $350 for the device.

"It's as easy as one-two-three," said the man, who carried on a half-hour conservation with a reporter without being noticed.

Jones said illegal phones are prized possessions and inmates will viciously fight with anyone -- including correctional officers -- who try to take them away.

Some officers on undermanned shifts won't even go into cells to search for the phones for fear of being outnumbered and attacked, Jones said. He said he knows of four officers who were injured in the last two months in such encounters.

For more than two years, South Carolina has been seeking federal permission to jam cellphone signals at state prisons, but the request has stalled before the Federal Communications Commission, despite support from 30 other states.

"It's something our folks keep bringing up, but we can't get it approved," Newsom said. "The cellphone problem is epidemic, and it's not just a problem for us. Every state is dealing with this right now."

FCC officials said last week that the request is still under review, with no timetable for a decision.

Meanwhile, inmates at Lieber warn that more trouble might be in the offing as tensions simmer under extended lockdowns. Inmates in the Ashley dorm said they have been locked down in crowded cells for weeks, deprived of showers and recreation time and fed meal after meal of stale bologna.

Prison officials lock down the units for every infraction. If two men fight, everyone suffers, they said.

Jones agreed, but he feels the most empathy for the people he used to work with. Many have no choice but to keep working in an environment of constant risk, he said. "It's sad, but they need these jobs to pay the bills. They need the money, but they need to be safe too."

It seems the staff that works there is just as much a prisoner as the other inmates but for other reasons. With the economy in its current state the prison industry can seem like a "somewhat" secure invironment as far as pay, benefits and job security can go. I think thats why the industry can be so harsh to the staff. They know that people will come for the jobs no matter what the conditions are and that add to a horrible turn over rate.