Outage locks even the jailers in

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

In a jail, you want people to stay locked in.

But last week, on March 12, even the jailers couldn't get out for a while.

About 2:30 a.m. a truck that had gotten lost and pulled into the county jail parking area accidentally backed into an electrical box on the property, killing power to the entire facility.

A back-up generator failed to come on, leaving everyone inside until power could be restored a short time later.

Sheriff Rick Layher said the incident "was a real learning experience." Not only did the generator issue need to be addressed, but those in the building quickly discovered a need for battery-powered emergency lighting, which Layher said would be obtained.

There was no threat of any prisoner escape, he added, since all cell areas remained locked during the outage.

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One would have thought a public building like the jail would already have emergency lighting. I cannot think of a similiar building that I have been in that has not had them near each exit. Guess the Sheriff's department has not caught up to the modern codes.

-- Posted by B Mullen on Sun, Mar 22, 2009, at 8:35 PM
Or...checked out their emergency systems and backup. They are lucky nothing went really wrong. Makes a person wonder what else they left out of the building plan.

-- Posted by OpinionMissy on Wed, Mar 25, 2009, at 11:05 AM
Maybe they consulted with the WECRD on how to build a facilty, oh wait, this one did not take 10 years to plan and have that plan change each time the wind blows.

-- Posted by B Mullen on Sun, Mar 29, 2009, at 11:18 AM

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