Burst water heater pipe floods Porter County election office, damages 911 circuit room

Chicago Tribune

18-02-2025

A fail in a sautered joint on piping to a water heater at the main floor Porter County Elections & Registration Office likely caused over $1 million in damages Sunday according to the county's Facilities Director Joe Wiszowaty. That's in addition to any damages that may be found to more than 460 voting machines stored in the basement where the water trickled down at 157 Franklin St.
The damage could have been even worse if facilities staff hadn't shown up at the building's east entrance to shovel snow Sunday evening around 6 p.m. 'There was literally a river of water coming out the back,' Wiszowaty said.
Water dripping into the basement circuit room for the E911 department caused the county to lose communication with the Indiana Public Safety Commission tower. 'When that happens we are no longer connected throughout the state,' said E911 Director Debby Gunn. 'Fortunately we have a really robust redundancy system.'
That allowed first responder radios to continue communicating throughout the county. 'We were never at any point without radio communication,' Gunn said.
The county was, however, on backup as it awaited a tech's arrival to change out a circuit. Gunn explained that responsibility for her department's physical service by a T1 line into the building is shared by AT&T and Frontier. 'We have to contact AT&T and they have to contact Frontier,' she said.
As the 24-hour mark on backup approached she began putting pressure on the vendors to speed up their protocol. A tech came out Monday evening and took 15 to 20 minutes to replace the damaged circuit. 'They are very familiar with our redundancy out here, so they knew we were on backup,' Gunn said.
Porter County Clerk Jessica Bailey, who oversees the Elections Office, said it's estimated 200 gallons of water per minute were gushing from the faulty pipe for about two hours before it was discovered, leaving six inches of water throughout the office.
'It's a blessing this wasn't last year,' she said, referring not only to it not being an election year, unless a special election is called, but also to the fact that the county's paper records from the 1970s through 2017 were stored in the basement until last year.
The records were moved out before the 2024 elections to make way for the over 460 voting machines that have to be stored between elections. 'They all have to be analyzed because of the amount of the moisture that was in the air,' she said. They'll be moved to a climate-controlled location for that analysis.
Porter County Director of Elections & Registration Sundae Schoon said it will not take long to receive replacements should any of the machines be inoperable. She and her staff were in the ruined office Tuesday morning continuing to retrieve salvageable equipment to transfer to their temporary quarters in the Clerk's Office on the second floor of the courthouse on the square in Valparaiso.
Staff spent President's Day moving into the temporary quarters. 'The facilities department is phenomenal,' Schoon said of their help.
Four full-time staffers will work from the courthouse, while Schoon and the deputy director will work a hybrid schedule between there and their homes. Four part-time staffers will work on an on-call basis.
Bailey is estimating the temporary location will be necessary for about three months, pending feedback from insurance adjusters. Staff from Tudor Restoration and Absolutely Dry have been on hand ripping up flooring, drilling holes in the walls to help them dry out, and running fans. Testing for mold will also be done.
All the work comes less than a year after the space was remodeled to make way for the elections staff to move last spring from the administration building at 155 Indiana Ave., where the office was located on the lower level.
Originally Published: February 18, 2025 at 2:55 PM CST