“A building in its infancy,” like the Foley Corrections Complex, according to Deputy Chief Randy Bishop, should not be encountering serious problems like a mold infestation.

The complex was completed in 2000, but in October mold was found in the building, and the air conditioning units appear to be the main culprit for causing the infestation after a preliminary walkthrough. An industrial hygienist will be called in to determine the exact type of mold and the best course of action to eradicate the mold and prevent it from coming back to plague the police department.

According to Bishop, the mold was found completely by accident.

“Chief [Wilson] was out for a week and his office was closed the whole week. I would go in there every night just to sort his papers and his mail out, so he was gone for almost nine days,” said Bishop.

The time Wilson spent away from his office, which was closed during his absence, was enough time for a good deal of mold to accumulate. Wilson first noticed something on his Class A jacket, which was hanging on the back of his door. At first, he thought he had gotten something all over it, but upon further observation he found it to be mold.

“Then he got to looking and he saw mold on some of his desk chairs. Then he had some hats up on the top of his desk and they had all developed mold,” said Bishop.

Bishop said the police department immediately called ServPro to get the company to come out and assess the situation.

“They came out and confirmed, yes, it is mold,” said Bishop.

The company also told Bishop that the building had some definite problems, most notably high humidity readings in most of the rooms in the front of the building, near the Chief’s office. Bishop was told for proper air conditioning there should be about 55 percent humidity level. In some of the front offices, the levels were as high as 85 percent, especially in the Chief’s office where Bishop said appeared to be the worse problems.

After an evaluation from ServPro, the police department was advised to contact an industrial hygienist because the degree of the mold found was so bad, and government regulations required that extensive action be taken.

Based on ServPro’s suggestion, Bishop approached the city council to allocate $3,000 to hire the hygienist. According to Bishop, the hygienist will come in and determine what type of mold it is, how much is there and what the best course of action to eradicate the mold will be.

Bishop has no idea how much cleaning the mold will end up costing the city, but however much it costs, he said it has to be done. Depending on the cost, the job will either be put out for bids or the department will get price quotes.

Bishop said once the mold is evaluated, the question of what caused the mold to start with will have to be answered so another outbreak can be prevented in the future.

“Now we are having to go back and look at why we have high moisture, which supports the mold growth,” said Bishop.

Bishop has already contacted a company out of Loxley, which does service work for large department stores, and other commercial buildings to ensure the air conditioning units in place are working as best they can.

The building has never encountered any issues staying cool, so Bishop just assumed the air conditioning units were doing what they were supposed to.

“It appears what is happening is that the air conditioners are not exchanging the air. It is just recirculating the air. We can keep the building cool, but it is not bringing the air back out which moves the moisture out with it. The moisture is just staying in place, which causes the mold,” said Bishop.

Because of the high humidity readings which were found, Bishop has been running four dehumidifiers around the clock to try to keep the moisture down.

“I have to empty them almost daily. I am still running them because I want to continue to pull that moisture out as well as I can,” said Bishop.

Bishop hopes the problem can be fixed relatively easily.

“It is not going to be something that is going to be fixed overnight but we are on it as fast and as heavy as we can stay on it. We are going to get it fixed. We have got to,” said Bishop.

Bishop thinks finding the mold was just pure luck. “It was just pure happenstance that we found it. Once we get it cleaned up, we are going to have to look at solving the problem that caused it in the first place. This has started out small, like a little snowflake, but now we have a giant snowball,” said Bishop.