Lightning strikes sheriff’s office, damaging communications systems

A lightning strike during a passing thunderstorm Sunday morning knocked out radio communications at the Ozark County Sheriff’s Office, took out phone lines and zapped an office copier machine. Electrical power automatically switched over to the building’s gas-powered emergency generator, according to office administrator Gail Reich. “Everybody was always safe,” Reich said. “The 911 system never went out because it’s on a different system, and we had handheld radios and cell phones so we could always get calls and respond to them. We couldn’t page, but we could call.”
The lightning strike “skipped around” the office, disabling some systems while leaving others intact. “It took out the copy machine that was sitting between two computers,” Reich said. “But only the copy machine got hit. It’s crazy how lightning works.”
The lightning also took out the interoffice phone system, which is used during visiting hours for prisoners to talk to visitors, so visiting hours were canceled Sunday.
Ozark County Emergency Management director Brett Meints contacted the Springfield-Greene County Office of Emergency Management, which sent two staff members and three communications specialists to help the sheriff’s office restore its communications systems. The OEM team brought its Region D Mobile Communications support vehicle “to assist with dispatch calls,” according to its Facebook post, which said the Greene Countians’ response was “a great example of neighbors helping neighbors.”
The office was functioning normally Monday while some repairs were still ongoing, Reich said.