More testing of Flagler sheriff's Ops Center likely

A deepening divide between county officials and Flagler County Sheriff’s Office employees was on full display during a Monday morning workshop as stakeholders work to resolve the quagmire at the Sheriff’s Office Operations Center in Bunnell.

As many as 35 employees stationed in the Bunnell main station have filed worker's compensation complaints amid claims the building is contaminated and is the cause of a barrage of health symptoms ranging from skin rashes to asthma and other respiratory disorders.

Flagler County commissioners on Monday listened to Dr. Zdenek Hejzlar present reports from an air quality study and mold testing he led in June inside the now-evacuated operations center. The findings were released late Thursday in a report that deemed the building safe for occupancy.

Hejzlar’s analysis was meant to provide key answers to what might be causing employees’ health problems. But it became apparent Monday that it’s likely the first of many inspections at the operations center as officials from both the county and the Sheriff’s Office began positioning for further testing.

“Frankly, my team and I have no confidence in this building,” Sheriff Rick Staly told commissioners.

The sheriff said his agency plans to hire a consultant to review Hejzlar’s complete 1,745-page report, which indicated no mold or toxins in the building were linked to employees’ illnesses.

Sheriff: report was rushed

Hejzlar is the senior managing consultant of Engineering Systems Inc., or ESi, the Fort Myers environmental science consultant hired by the county in May to investigate several contamination theories at the Sheriff’s Office headquarters in Bunnell. Several employees told commissioners his findings aren’t enough to override their firsthand experiences at the operations center.

“I can tell you I’m terrified to go back in that building, I know how I feel when I’m there and I know how I feel when I’m not in the building,” said Sheriff’s Office Cmdr. Jennifer Taylor, a lead detective who was the first employee to report symptoms when she started having skin rashes and chronic hives all over her body in September 2016. “We are not asking for a fancy place to work, we’re just asking for a safe place to work in.”

Staly told commissioners he felt Hejzlar’s report was rushed and asked commissioners to slow the process, saying he would “never accept this building until this issue is proven or disproven as a possible cause for the employees’ illness.”

More than 50 people sat in the crowd, most of them officers and Sheriff’s Office employees. They listened as Staly called for more testing, particularly of the building’s HVAC system, to find answers he said aren’t in Hejzlar’s report. He also criticized a conclusion included in the report, which attributed one possible cause of the outbreaks to employees spraying their work stations with too many disinfectants as an overreaction to concerns about the building.

Staly told commissioners he plans to discontinue his agency’s contract with the Sheriff’s Office cleaning crew Oct. 1 and allow the county to hire their own contractors to clean the building.

“The way this report is written, it’s like the old days of blaming the victims of domestic violence that it’s their fault,” he said. “I will not tolerate blaming the victims of this building — my employees — that it is their fault. They have no choice but to work in this building or find another job.”

Meanwhile, county officials said they’ve asked for a consultation with the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control’s Atlanta office and plan to have CDC review Hejzlar’s report.

Threats and allegations

Taylor was one of a handful of affected employees who spoke directly to commissioners on Monday. She recounted "unbearable" skin rashes that cleared up whenever she spent extended periods away from the operations center. Her symptoms flared up whenever she was reassigned to work in the building.

"The uncomfortable itching is overwhelming," she said. "Some nights, I used to lay in my bed with ice packs on my head and other parts of my body just to numb and stop the itching, the burning and the pain in my skin."

Much was made about employees’ medical records, which were never made available to Hejzlar as he worked on his report. Those records did not begin trickling in until Friday. Staly said the delay was not intentional; they were held up because attorneys had to review them.

County Attorney Al Hadeed acknowledged that the medical records will help Dr. Stanley Haimes, an occupational safety specialist the Sheriff’s Office has hired to analyze employees’ symptoms. He also suggested attorneys for the employees purposefully waited until the last minute to turn the records over to the county.

“I believe that after individuals read the report, they realized it was very incumbent upon them to submit their medical records because what the report essentially does on its own is to defeat all of their claims in a worker's compensation conflict. Because they didn’t submit their medical records and have them evaluated. So I believe that all of a sudden, there was a reconsideration of what they were doing.”

Hadeed later softened his stance after listening to Staly’s explanation.

But Geoff Bichler, an Orlando attorney representing many of the affected employees in their worker's compensation claims, responded by threatening the county with a lawsuit later in Monday’s workshop. He also said his law firm is working to hire a specialist to inspect the operations center and demanded the county preserve the building for that testing.

“If this is not worker’s comp, this can easily become a civil negligence claim,” he said.