New Orleans, La. -- With temperatures in the 90's and the heat index in the triple digits, the timing was especially bad for a mysterious power failure at OPP.
Around 9 Monday morning, prisoners say their situation inside of the jail became dire.
"We got calls this morning from our clients and other prisoners in the jail saying there was no electricity, meaning there was no fans circulating any air," says Katie Schwartzmann, managing attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Schwartzmann's group has been a vocal critic of the jail and Orleans Sheriff Marlin Gusman. She says just hearing the news caused a heightened level of concern about what may have been going on inside of the jail.
"There's a couple of reasons why that's really dangerous. First, if the heat gets up to those kinds of levels it's a medical threat for people who have medical conditions. It also increases the level of violence in there," says Schwartzmann.
According to the Ehrhardt Group, in charge of public relations for the Sheriff's Office, power was lost and a back-up generator is being used. It's still unclear, though, when the generators kicked on, since some of the prisoners complained of not having any circulating air for hours during the day.
Schwartzmann says the problems go far beyond comfort and ventilation.
"A lot of the locking mechanisms in the jail are sometimes automated. So if you have an electrical failure of that sort, I just question whether they would be able to open the doors in the way they need to in an event of an emergency to get on or off those tiers," says Schwartzmann.
Entergy did investigate, but told FOX 8 the problem is not on their end. They say the grid and transmitters in the area are still working fine.
So, we still do not know exactly what caused the power outage.
We're told, because of a lack of air conditioning in the room where inmates meet with their lawyers, those meetings had to be canceled.
Orleans Parish Prison facility at Gravier and S. White Streets
