By Jonathan Zweygardt
Hays Post
The Ellis County Dispatch Center is back up a running after flooding from a sprinkler head activation caused significant damage to equipment.
On Monday, Aug. 2 at about 5 p.m. workers soldering on the dispatch center’s HVAC accidentally set off a fire suppression system sprinkler, spraying water on dispatch equipment and flooding a portion of rooms housing equipment belonging to the county, the City of Hays and Nex-Tech.
Ellis County Administrator Darin Myers said staff was quickly able to roll the phone calls over to the Hays Fire Department and 911 phone calls were transferred to the Pratt County.
“Within a couple of hours, we had a significant amount of the equipment back up,” said Myers.
Information Technology Director Mike Leiker told the county commission that they were able to get the last couple of things back up and running Monday with used and borrowed equipment.
Leiker said there was a lot of network equipment that was directly below the sprinkler head that was impacted by the water.
“Fortunately, we had moved all of the servers into the newly remodeled, what used to be the shower, server room,” Leiker said. “None of the servers were damaged, thankfully because our downtime would have been significant if there were to have happened.”
Leiker estimated that there were as many as 10 switchers, owned by the city of Hays and the county, that were damaged by the water.
Insurance will cover the nearly $80,000 in damage. The most expensive piece of equipment destroyed records law enforcement phone calls and public safety radios and 911 phone calls, estimated to cost a little over $60,000.
Commission Chair Butch Schlyer said, “I think the county and the citizens are just so very fortunate to have such qualified personnel to jump on this kind of a situation and get it resolved in an expedited manner. We are truly blessed with our personnel.”
Both Leiker and Myers thanked all of the city and county IT staff members who chipped into help along with Nex-Tech staff members, several different county and city agencies and Clean-Rite.
“In an emergency you tend to panic,” Leiker said. “But there wasn’t any panic, we were able to mitigate it pretty quickly.”
Myers said they had the fire sprinkler company come back to the building and go over the system again. They moved the sprinkler head and placed fire extinguishers in the room to avoid a similar situation in the future.
“I think we’ll learn a lot from this experience too,” Leiker said. “We’ll come out of it better.”
In other business the commission approved a resolution updating the hours in which alcohol is allowed to be sold on Sunday’s. Earlier this year Governor Laura Kelly signed a measure that changes the hours to 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. The change only currently affects one establishment located in the county.
The commission also got an update from High Plains Mental Health, approved a grant for the Northwest Business Corridor and got an update on employee health insurance costs for 2022.