One night in 1953, some of the staff arrived to find that their colleagues had barricaded themselves in a bathroom. As they huddled inside, patients crowded at the door holding fiery newspaper rolls like they were tiki torches. They were attempting to smoke the employees out. Uria knew some of the men, and they had managed to survive that night in February 1953 by taking turns sticking their heads inside a toilet and repeatedly flushing it and gasping for fresh air.
