Jail Faces Overflow Problem - Water Inmate Plugs Toilet, Leaving $200,000 In Damage Below

An inmate with an attitude and a toilet caused chaos at the Spokane County Jail over the weekend, officials said.

The unidentified prisoner flooded his commode Saturday afternoon, setting off a chain reaction that caused about $200,000 in water damage on five floors of the 13-story building.

Security was never compromised during the incident, said sheriff’s Capt. James Hill, the jail commander, but the resulting damage was inconvenient and will be expensive to fix.

“It caused us a great problem,” Hill said. “Our plates were full before this happened.”

It was the second time in a week a government building in Spokane was damaged by flooding. A pie tin left in a sink at Spokane City Hall on June 11 caused an overflow that damaged portions of four floors there. Officials are still tallying the cost of that mishap.

Hill was reluctant Tuesday to talk about how the jail bedlam began. He said he didn’t want to give the more than 500 inmates in the jail any ideas.

But County Administrator Jim Lindow told county commissioners what happened.

According to Lindow, a prisoner on the jail’s sixth floor clogged his toilet and began hitting the plunger. After several flushes, water began overflowing the commode, Lindow said.

Normally, the water does little damage before being collected in floor drains, said Lindow, adding that flooding toilets is a common form of rebellion among prisoners.

This time, though, the runoff seeped into an electrical box next to the inmate’s cell, Hill said. “We then got into a kind of domino effect,” he said.

The water shorted out some circuit boards in the electrical box. That caused the building’s computer-controlled sprinkler system to spray the bottom four floors.

The sprinkler water gushed everywhere, Hill said. “We had it raining down the elevators,” he said.

By the time maintenance workers got the problem under control, the four bottom floors were soaked.

The water damaged ceiling tiles, carpeting, video cameras, monitors and other equipment. It also knocked out the sprinkler system, Hill said.

Lindow said the damage would cost upward of $200,000 to fix. Insurance should cover most of it.

County Commissioner Steve Hasson said jail officials should plan ways to prevent a similar incident from occurring by protecting critical electrical boxes.

“If one person could do $200,000 worth of damage over there, then the next person could do $200,000 worth of damage,” Hasson said.

The inmate is likely to face additional charges, officials said.

, DataTimes