A lot more than a flood of distress calls came into the Indianola Police Department this week.
According to Indianola Police Chief Edrick Hall, the Second Street station also had a flood of waters to rush in forcing the dispatchers and all of the other occupants to flee the scene.
“I could probably use a couple of them on the force the way they took off running out of that building," Hall said.
Not only did the waters affect the department’s radio operators but also everything at ground level.
As of Tuesday, Hall was still not fully aware of what caused the flooding.
“All I know is public works was outside working on a water line and something they were working on went pow.” Hall said.
Mayor Steve Rosenthal said public works was fixing a leak in front of the police station when workers encountered some old infrastructure that had not been accounted for prior to digging.
A valve, Rosenthal said that was assumed to be on a dead line and in the closed position ended up being live and open.
In order to fix the leak, Rosenthal said several valves had to be shut off. As public works was cutting those valves back on, a six-inch line that might have once fed a warehouse on the property began to gush.
Rosenthal said public works then had to spend the next 15 minutes shutting those valves off again.
“For about 30 minutes, a six-inch line was running full-steam,” Rosenthal said.
Rosenthal credits Hall with getting his people out of the building and with quick thinking in immediately shutting the power off to the building.
Rosenthal said as much as four to five inches of water was backed up in some rooms.
Hall said that the view from outside was unreal. “It was like a river coming out of there,” said Hall.
The chief stated, “Our entire first floor was flooded and that includes from all of the administration's offices--myself, the assistant chief, the lieutenant--everything that was downstairs,” said Hall, “All clerical records, all of that was flooded.
Despite the deluge of water throughout the main floor, Hall said they were able to salvage the records.
“The reports were all saved to the server, we moved the server to the fire training building where the dispatchers are working out of now,” he said.
As one would imagine, the abrupt departure of the dispatchers from the building forced a short hiccup in communications.
However, Hall said they were able to quickly put the department’s cell phone number up on its Facebook page Monday night, but those who did not have access to the page and dialed the main number were able to connect to the sheriff’s office and the sheriff’s department relayed the messages to the police.
Hall stated that because of the continued threat of storms here in the Delta and those storms causing power outages, which in turn causes the loss of phone service, the dispatchers have a department-issued cell phone which can be used to answer calls into the department.
And as of Tuesday, if a person calls the 662-887-1811 number their call will be forwarded to the cell phone. He said that order didn't go into effect until Tuesday.
“If you dial 1811 now, it’s ringing into the cell phone,” Hall said.
Hall said Sheriff James Haywood has also offered them space, if they need it, at the sheriff's office, but he's hoping for a speedy recovery from the flooding.
Servpro was called in after the waters subsided, and the company began the cleanup process.
Hall said on Tuesday afternoon, “ServPro said it would take them three days to get all of the water out of the building and we are at day two, so sometime tomorrow we should be done getting all of the water out of the building.”
According to Hall fans and humidifiers are running around the clock inside of the structure and once the water is gone, the cleaning process will start and the cleanup crew will make sure there's no risk of mold or anything like that in the building and from there Hall said they will see what flooring needs to be replaced.
Bryan Davis contributed to this story.
