Courthouse flooded with inconvenience

Staff Writer

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A sheriff's deputy at the Curry County Courthouse discovered an inconvenient surprise in the building Tuesday night — a flow of water that spread from the second floor county clerks office all the way down into the county sheriff's office.

County Construction and Safety Officer Ben Roberts said the culprit was a toilet water supply line.

Aside from a musty smell, wet carpets and some wet ceiling tiles; as far as they can tell the physical damage to the building is minimal, Roberts said.

But the 2 a.m. phone call to 9th Judicial District Deputy Court Executive Officer Orlando Ulibarri left seven court clerks hurrying to move their computers and phone lines up to the third floor so they could do their jobs.

“Our staff was wonderful,” Ulibarri said. “Our staff will do whatever they need to do to move around — they'll just move on a moment’s notice to get stuff taken care of.”

Ulibarri said the court clerks office took an extra hit when the only elevator to the third floor failed temporarily Wednesday, so staff ended up walking up and down the stairs to take care of the public.

“It was a very big inconvenience,” Ulibarri said. “When you have four judges here, you have jury trials and hearings and everything it's a pain, but we made do with what we can.”

The court clerks are still performing their usual services, but Ulibarri said anyone needing to do business with them will be redirected by security to their temporary offices.

“Check with security and they'll guide them right to where they need to go,” Ulibarri said. “Please bear with us on the phone systems because we have pushed about 50 percent of our phone lines upstairs.”

In the county administrative offices, personnel are doing their jobs as usual with the added background noise of large fans roaring in the hallway to speed up the drying process.

The sheriff's office was left with one back office unusable, according to Curry County Sheriff Wesley Waller. He said the leak was an inconvenience, but the staff are still working as normal.

“We are just glad it's fresh water this time,” Waller said.

Three years ago, a leak from the courthouse air conditioning unit flooded the second floor, resulting in almost 30 employees filing worker’s compensation claims from exposure to noxious fumes.

Roberts said they had a company extract water from the carpets, and they will replace the damaged ceiling tiles when everything is dry.

He anticipates the courthouse to be back in order by early next week.