The State Attorney’s Office could issue a report regarding an explosion that damaged the Central Booking and Detention facility late this week or early next.

Assistant State Attorney Greg Marcille said that his office still is investigating the explosion at Central Booking on April 30. That explosion, caused by a natural gas leak came on the heels of an historic rainfall that flooded the basement.

Central Booking housed some 607 people at the time. The explosion killed two inmates, paralyzed a corrections officer and injured 184 people.

Marcille also said that his office’s findings differ “substantially” from those reported by local attorney Ed Fleming to Escambia County Commissioners recently.

“We have received copies (of Ed Fleming’s report) and reviewed them,” Marcille said. “There are substantial differences in his report and the facts that we have discovered during the course of our investigation.

“Ours was substantially more in-depth and involved the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the state fire marshal’s office and our office, numerous witnesses and other types of evidence.”

Fleming was tasked with investigating the explosion in terms of potential civil liability, including federal civil rights violations. He wrote that he found no evidence that jail staff ignored reports of the smell of gas ahead of the explosion.

“We focused on whether county officials in charge of the jail ignored reports of a gas leak during the hours preceding the blast as reported by various media,” Fleming wrote. “We found no such evidence” based on interviews with staff on duty at the time of the blast, maintenance records and nursing staff notes.

Marcille said an announcement from his office on the findings of their investigation should be forthcoming by the end of this week or in the early part of next week.

Fleming’s report, linked here, indicates that it is believed that the natural gas dryers in the basement were not bolted to the floor, “despite contract specifications that instructed the contractor to ‘bolt, level and group all equipment as necessary,’” Fleming wrote.

“The risk of unattached gas dryers in a flood are so well known within the industry that the building code requires bolting in a “flood hazard” area. Although the CBF had not been designed (sic) as a ‘flood hazard’ area, and thus the failure to attach the dryers was not a code violation, the contractor had actual knowledge that the basement was prone to flooding, and thus knew or should have known that bolting of the dryers was “necessary” to avoid a gas leak risk.

“I found no evidence that the County knew that the specification had been ignored.”

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