MANILA, October 2, 2009 (AFP) - Fish swim in the prison yard, a guard patrols on stilts and inmates guide an improvised raft, kept afloat by rows of empty plastic water containers.

Nearly a week after killer floods swept through the Philippine capital Manila, one of its riverside jails remains thigh-deep in water.

"The floodwaters rose up to waist level," the Pasig City Jail's chief, Superintendent Hilbert Flor, told AFP from a wooden platform in the prison yard, insisting none of the 859 inmates died or escaped in the flooding.

"The good thing about it is we did not have any casualties and we have not had any outbreaks of diarrhea or other diseases."

However, Flor gave a graphic account of the chaos as floodwaters quickly rose in the tiny jail, which is just 1,920-square-meters (21,000 square-feet) and packed well over its intended capacity of 200 inmates.

Male and female inmates on the ground floor frantically bailed the water using brooms and their bare hands, he said.

When the waters continued to rise, authorities sent all 102 women inmates upstairs into a pair of unused cells, while the male prisoners were put in four of the cells upstairs, worsening congestion even further.

Two prison vans and the warden's car were not as lucky, laying half-submerged in one corner of the yard.

Flor said a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross was expected to bring sanitation materials on Friday, while social workers would also be arriving in late afternoon with relief goods.

Like the inmates' relatives and other visitors, the aid team would have to take a boat to the prison gate, where low security-risk inmates wearing yellow uniforms will paddle an improvised boat to take them to the cells upstairs.

Outside, a lone guard conducted his business on improvised stilts put together from wooden poles, while another inside the compound stood on a wooden platform above the water.

"We have fish here," the warden said, pointing to a bubble in the putrid brown water from his perch on a ledge.

"Maybe we will have to give the prisoners fishing rods for recreation instead of letting them play basketball on the yard," he joked.

Inmates facing more serious criminal charges peered at visitors from behind tiny barred windows upstairs. Flor would not allow an AFP team to visit their cells, saying he lacked permission from higher authorities.

"The only way they are going to escape here is by going underwater," he cracked.

The prison is located about two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the Pasig river, which burst its banks and also flooded a sprawling community of squatters living around the prison gates.

Flor said the prison was in the midst of a three-year programme aimed at downsizing its population to a more manageable 400 inmates, about half the current number.

But removing any prisoners immediately was out of the question, as the water-logged prison vans remain submerged in the courtyard.

With the water having receded only about 30 centimeters (one foot) since Saturday's flood, and electricity still not reconnected, Flor said he had no idea when the jail would return to normal.

But he was confident that the prison could manage, saying it had adequate supplies of food for prisoners, while the extra help from the government and international relief agencies would be enough support.