County jail kitchen running after cleanup

After more than a week of cleanup, the kitchen at the Putnam County Jail was up and running again on Monday.

The operation of the kitchen was knocked out by an faulty activation of the fire suppression system over the stove in the early morning hours of Saturday, Jan. 17.

The malfunction covered the kitchen in a fire-suppression chemical that had to be cleaned by an outside vendor.

The various appliances had to be taken apart and cleaned piece by piece before jail kitchen staff could get back to business as usual on Monday.

The activation is being blamed on a failure in the fire suppression cable that runs above the stove area. The cable is held together by fusable links that are designed to melt when they get too hot, which activates a nearby tank to release the suppression chemicals.

Chief Deputy Phil Parker said that once activated, the system worked as it should have. Unfortunately, it never should have activated.

"It worked the way it's designed to work, except that it wasn't supposed to activate," Parker said.

Although the incident forced jail staff to operate the kitchen from the sallyport area of the jail, the county continued to provide inmates with proper meal service.

By law, a jail must provide inmates with at least one hot meal a day. Stockton said the county has met this requirement in spite of the issues.