Melee Blamed on Race Tension, Weather : Corrections: Black and Latino prisoners at Pitchess Honor Rancho clash for the second time this month--and the third this year.

Racial tension, warmer weather and a “close environment” were factors in a brawl involving dozens of black and Latino inmates at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic, authorities said Thursday.

One inmate suffered a minor stab wound and four others received cuts and bruises in the Wednesday-night melee, which involved a majority of the 130 inmates in a maximum-security dormitory at the jail, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Larry Mead said.

The 20-minute fight ended when about a dozen helmeted deputies armed with riot clubs appeared at a dormitory entrance. Four homemade knives, or “shanks,” were later found in the barracks, Mead said.

The incident marked the second time this month--and the third this year--that Latino and black prisoners have clashed at the sprawling, 8,300-inmate jail, located in a canyon east of the Magic Mountain amusement park.

Twenty-nine inmates were injured--including two who suffered broken bones--during a June 3 melee involving 40 black and Latino prisoners.

Sheriff’s Capt. John Thurman, who commands the jail’s East Facility, where Wednesday’s fight broke out, said it apparently was racially motivated. But he said such brawls are relatively common and do not indicate an upswing in racial violence there.

“There’s not a trend. It’s not getting any worse; it’s not getting any better,” Thurman said.

“What we have is a bunch of people in a fairly close environment. . . . These things happen in hotter weather. . . . When you’re hot and sweaty, you get irritable.”

He said that although the dormitory is well below capacity, tempers sometimes flare when inmates compete to use the limited number of urinals, telephones or other facilities.

Inmate Edward Robinson, 22, received a “very, very minor” stab wound and was treated at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia and returned to the jail, Thurman said. The four other injured inmates received minor cuts and bruises.

“Apparently, the inmates had a few words during the day, and this was the end result of it,” he said. “The blacks went to one end of the dorm and the Hispanics to the other and started throwing things at each other.”

Thurman said four or five inmates who were injured or believed to have instigated the melee have been transferred to other compounds within the jail.

Although the conflict involved blacks and Latinos, other fights have broken out between inmates of the same race, Thurman said.

“They get mad about things in here that they’d never pay attention to outside. . . . These kinds of things are fairly normal in a custodial environment,” he said.

When riot-equipped deputies appeared at the dormitory, “the ballgame was over. The inmates went about their own merry way,” Thurman said.