Men who’ve spent time in the 60-year-old downtown Los Angeles lockup say inmates are given cold food every day of the week — so sometimes they start blazes to heat it or cook their own. Other times, they use clandestine fires to warm their coffee, light contraband cigarettes or drugs, create jailhouse air freshener or just stay warm. In Men’s Central Jail, they say, there is almost always something burning.

The recurring hazard is possible in part because of the lack of smoke detectors or sprinklers in the inmate housing areas. Without automatic alarms, officials said, it’s up to jailers to spot fires and manually activate an alarm inside one of the deputy booths.

Experts such as Carlee Purdum, who studies fire safety in jails and prisons as assistant director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University, worry that’s not enough.

“The largest carceral disasters we’ve seen in the U.S. and across the world have occurred when prisons, jails or detention facilities are not treated seriously by those in charge of managing fire risk,” she said. “Incarcerated people are uniquely vulnerable to fires in that they cannot take protective action on their own.”

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it was aware of fires occurring in Men’s Central Jail. But officials said that they are typically small and that the county’s seven jails are in compliance with fire safety codes.