Oklahoma County Corrections spokesperson Mark Opgrande said although the failures in the jail’s sump pumps, a fire suppression system and a hot water line occurred within days of each other, they weren’t related.
Jail CEO Brandi Garner called the coinciding outages that began on Oct. 12 a “perfect storm” of problems.
Busted pipes caused flooding in the jail’s receiving area, training area, basement and three upper floors where incarcerated people are incarcerated.
“We had people on three different floors that were without hot water for a number of days,” Garner said at an Oklahoma County Budget Board meeting.
The problems cascaded from there.
“People were moving equipment out of the way to try to protect it, and in the In doing so, when they went to plug it back in, they did not contact IT,” Garner said. “That created a situation where our entire system went down, our information technology system.”
Garner said IT services were back online by Monday.
“Now everything's back to. . . I don't want to say normal, but we're operational,” Garner said.
It took longer to turn the hot water on, Garner said, because the tools for pipes of that size weren’t readily available. Opgrande said no detainees were relocated or otherwise affected by the failures, except those who lost access to hot water.
Garner said if these problems happen again, the jail’s contractors now have the tools to restore hot water immediately. In a press release, other county officials pressed for a new jail.
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