Heat goes out at jail

The heating system at the Pike County jail went out Jan. 13 and due to the cold temperatures at the time, inmates had to be moved to the neighboring Lamar County jail while the unit was replaced. This week, snow and freezing temperatures are forecast for Pike.

“The heat went out Monday morning and we had to have county maintenance come look into it. It was a 15-year-old unit which is about the life expectancy of the unit. We were going to order a part and try to fix it but the part was four weeks out and with the age of the unit, there was still the risk something else would break or be broken,” said sheriff Jimmy Thomas. “We made the decision to put a new unit in and we moved all our inmates to Lamar County.”

Sheriff Thomas said 18 inmates were moved as a result of the faulty heating system and the jail has a total of 22 inmates housed out currently.

“We were able to replace the unit, but we have other issues in the jail and we are going to meet to review those and see if we need to do those repairs before we transport the inmates back,” said Thomas. “In these temperatures, you just can’t go without heat and when you get into using other sources of heating, you face problems with carbon monoxide and other issues.”

Portions of the sheriff’s office date back to the late 1800s or early 1900s with the part currently used as the sheriff’s office built in 1975. Construction on a new jail facility started in 1997 but the project was never fully completed.