Thursday July 11, 2024 – Flood

Around 4:00AM on my first night to sleep in my bed at Atlanta Detention Center Unit #1, I wake up to go to the bathroom only to discover that my room is flooded. My cell floor is covered with about an inch of water throughout the cell and my shower slides are floating next to my bed. Needless to say not only was I shocked but I was very demoralized. Luckily I had a towel so I proceeded to use the bathroom and then dry my feet off. I then went back to sleep.

7:00AM rolls around and I hear the officer yell to the orderly “And we need to figure out where all this water is coming from!” Luckily for me my cell is directly across from the officer’s office and the water was coming out of my cell and under the door and flooding the common area of the unit directly in front of the officer’s office. I get up and get my breakfast (which was delivered to my door) because we were locked down (I guess due to the flood) and I told the officer that my room is flooded about an inch deep throughout. The officer yells at me “you’re going to have to wait!” I ate my breakfast on my bed and went back to sleep.

12:00PM approaches about an hour after they serve lunch and the orderlies finally get around to finding a vacuum and begin to vacuum the water while standing outside my cell door with the cell locked. I am telling them through the locked cell door we need to have the officer open the cell and we need to a squeegee to push the water from the back wall towards the door to the vacuum. The orderlies shrugged their shoulders. Finally about half an hour later, after I have been kicking the water towards the door with my foot, the officer shows up at the door and opens the cell door so we can actually deal with the issue. I offer to help the orderlies and they said I can’t. I proceed to check my email on the computer while they finish vacuuming up the water.

All together they got most of the water and the residue that was left dried a few hours later. We ended up staying locked down in our cells the entire day until around 5:30PM they let us out to get our dinner trays, watch tv, use computers etc. until 8:00PM when we had to lock down for the night.