The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department had to find temporary quarters in other counties for some prisoners after one of the central air units at the jail quit working Friday.
According to Sheriff Patrick Ray, jail personnel began to think something was amiss when the jail started heating up.
"On Friday evening, we noticed that the annex side of the jail was starting to heat up," the sheriff said. "We knew at that time that there was probably something wrong with the central heat and air unit.
“We called a local central heat and air company to come up and check it. They found out that one of the motors in the air unit had burned up.”
Ray said the unit may have been affected by power surges caused by a blown transformer.
“We feel like this was due to the transformer blowing Thursday in the city limits of Smithville. We've had some power surges at the jail from that and we think that was the cause of the unit going bad.”
The sheriff said that with the jail rapidly heating up, a local businessman stepped in to try and help keep the building bearable while repairs were made.
“They found a part in Nashville, and were going to go get it,” said Ray. “At that time, we knew we needed to do something to try and keep the jail annex as cool as we could. We contacted Jamie Turner, who has an industrial sized fan that takes water across a fan through a radiator system to produce cool air. We asked to borrow that from Turner. He was good enough to bring that up here to the jail and help us with that.
“We also got high-speed fans from the volunteer fire department, so we could circulate some air in here so it wouldn't be so hot,” Ray continued.
When the parts were not found right away, the sheriff said plans had to be made to find alternative housing for some inmates.
“When they came back from Nashville with the part, they discovered that it would not work. We called to check with other area central heat and air companies and found that nobody has this particular part. We learned that it would be Monday before anybody could get the part needed to fix the unit and to install it for us. So we knew at that time, we had to do something with our inmates,” Ray said.
“At the time this happened, there were 38 male inmates in the cells,” Ray explained.
“We took five of the inmates and moved them to a different area here in the old part of the jail, where the central air is still working. We took 15 inmates to Rutherford County, 12 inmates to Warren County, and four inmates to Smith County to the county jails there.
“Warren County was good to us. They provided a 10-passenger van which is set up to haul inmates. Smith County also did some transports for us back to their facility. We will not house any inmates in here until this is fixed,” said Sheriff Ray.
Video visitation for the weekend was also interrupted by the failure.
"This also affects our visitation for inmates,” Ray noted.
“Our video visitation is set up here in our jail where a family will go into a room. They look on a monitor and they talk through a handset to the inmate, who is still in their cell.
“The place where the family goes is in the annex side of the jail, so we have suspended the visits up here for this weekend, which is on Saturday and Sunday. Both days have been suspended. They will resume next weekend. So we're hoping that we can get this fixed on Monday and get our inmates back over here. Hopefully, everything will be okay with the original side of the jail, with the central and air unit there,” Ray concluded.
At press time the unit was still awaiting repair.