Flagler County IT crews spent Monday afternoon moving desks, unplugging wires and carrying computer monitors and keyboards out of the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office Operations Center.
BUNNELL — County IT crews spent Monday afternoon moving desks, unplugging wires and carrying computer monitors and keyboards out of the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office Operations Center.
Monday marked the first day of the coordinated plan to move 68 Sheriff’s Office employees out of the 35,000-square-foot headquarters in the heart of Bunnell, 901 E. Moody Blvd., amid suspicions that the building may be making workers there sick. Employees are being relocated to the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center and the administrative building on the campus of the Sheriff’s Office Detention Center over the next four days, according to a staggered plan to move them out one division at a time.
“It’s the start to what will hopefully, in the end, determine what’s wrong with the building and ensure the safety of my employees,” Sheriff Rick Staly said Monday. “It’s been a herculean effort to get to this point and hopefully by the end of the week, everybody will have been moved out and settled down. Of course every time you move people, you’re losing some productivity — at least during the day of the move. But each unit will be back up and running within a day.”
Flagler County’s IT team began the first step in the methodical transfer, packing up equipment from room No. 111, the office where 17 detectives are stationed.
Flagler County has hired Engineering Systems Inc., a Fort Myers company headed by environmental scientist Dr. Zdenek Hejzlar, to conduct comprehensive tests throughout the building. County Administrator Craig Coffey said Monday that Flagler officials also have finalized a contract with a radiologist. Those tests are expected to begin later this week.
There isn’t much furniture being taken to the new locations. Crews mostly loaded computer hardware, phones and printers into a moving van Monday. Jarrod Shupe, Flagler’s IT director, explained that his team spent two or three days preparing for the moves last week, doing “backside programming” on equipment. He said the specialists plan to reboot the data connections for equipment to get the agency’s network infrastructure back online as they transfer each department to its new location.
Major case investigators were stationed down the hall from that office last year, but moved into the office last week.
Four special unit detectives who shared office No. 129 became ill in November, all complaining of similar symptoms such as rashes, hives, itching, headaches, fatigue, and respiratory disorders. That office was quarantined and those investigators were transferred to the jail administrative building while the county ordered an air-quality study and remediations. In April, the special investigators moved back but began complaining that their symptoms had returned by May.
Staly ordered emergency temporary evacuations last week for eight employees in the agency who were experiencing significant symptoms, including major case detectives.
Two of the special detectives are currently out on Family Medical Leave Act sick leave due to their concerns about the building. Detective Elizabeth “Annie” Conrad wrote a three-page letter to Staly and Sheriff’s Office commanders in April, pleading the case for her fellow investigators and urging top administrators to take more heed of their fears.
In her letter, a copy of which was included in a recent internal investigation report, Conrad claims she had been punished and some in the agency have labeled her a “villain” and a “trouble maker” following a meeting she had with Undersheriff Jack Bisland to express her concerns about the building. Those fears of being exposed to toxins also prompted Conrad to hire her own mold specialist, who she said advised her to stay out of the building as a health precaution.
“I am extremely sick, absolutely terrified, and all I was asking for is support from the people I work for to find out why we were all getting sick and to take it serious,” she wrote. “I’m scared not only for me, but for everyone else who won’t speak up.
“One of the biggest struggles in all of this is the mental torture for a few reasons,” Conrad went on to state. “The fear of never getting better and never being normal again. The fear of losing the job that I love.”
The operations center is on the site of the former Memorial Hospital-Flagler, a building that sat shuttered for several years before the county purchased it in 2013 and renovated it into the agency's headquarters in September 2015.
Former sheriff Jim Manfre penned his own letter earlier this month, asserting that he was adamantly against the idea of refurbishing the building and favored knocking the old hospital down and building anew. He shared many of those same points publicly during a June 4 County Commission workshop where he blistered county officials for their decision and said the building should be abandoned immediately.
“From the very beginning, this has been a tale of incompetence and incredible disregard for the health and safety of the public servants who put their lives on the line every day,” he said.