Chief Jack Fortner always has a pair of rubber hip waders on hand in the Swain County jail — not in case of river rescues in the kayak-crazy town, nor for a little quick lunchtime fishing. Instead, they’re for trudging through the basement to turn off the electrical breaker when it floods.

While there’s always an inch or two of water lingering in the jail basement, when it rains hard the pump can’t keep up and the water starts rising, threatening an electrical short if it reaches the circuit box mounted about two feet above the floor.

Standing in knee-high water and cutting off an electrical breaker is not only dangerous, but stinky when the sewer backs up, too. The odor even drives deputies out of their main office upstairs.

“The smell is so bad, it just makes you nauseated,” Fortner said.

No power means no elevators, and using the stairs during heavy rains poses its own set of challenges. The stairs — really just an enclosed fire escape — turn into a waterfall.

Water pores in around a trapdoor in the roof and cascades down four flights of stairs. Jailers booking drunk prisoners have their work cut out for them to navigate up the three stories of slick concrete stairs laden with puddles with inmates in tow.

It’s not all bad, though, because at least with no elevator, there’s no the risk of accidentally pushing the button for the basement.

“We always tell the new deputies never to hit one in the elevator,” Fortner said. Threats of water pouring in the elevator doors is a slight turnoff in the orientation session, along with instructions of who to call when the pipes to the jail cells upstairs spring a leak or the plumbing gets stopped up. It happens with depressing frequency — a couple of times a week — dripping on computers, fax machines, or people’s heads.

“You can be interviewing somebody in the deputy room and your paper starts getting wet,” said Fortner.

So every Friday afternoon, the deputies cover the sheriff’s desk with a tarp. His personal office is shut and locked over the weekend, so a leak would ruin files and paperwork before it was detected Monday morning.

The deputies also take special precaution with a costly fingerprinting machine purchased with grant money: they hung a piece of Plexiglas above it.

The good news is the sprinkler system doesn’t leak. The bad news is that’s because there is no sprinkler system.

“It’s one of those things where you wake up in the morning and cross your fingers and say a prayer that everything will go OK,” said Fortner, who has nightmares about the Mitchell County fire that killed eight people.

Appliance underload

Some housewives have larger washers and driers than the Swain County Jail. The sole washer and drier for the jail are crammed into a landing in the stairwell and run all day, seven days a week, just to get through the pile of inmates’ uniforms and sheets and towels. Both have a short life cycle from all that use — about every three months they’re replaced.

Even if there was room somewhere for industrial washers and driers, which there isn’t, the electrical circuits probably wouldn’t handle the load.

When the heating system acts up or on bitter cold days, deputies run portable heaters in the office. But to run the heater, they have to shut down their computers, fax machine and coffee pot. If they need to file a report, send a fax or make a pot of coffee, they turn off the heater, turn on the equipment they need to use, and turn it back off before they can run the heater again.

“You have to choose what you want more, heat or coffee,” Fortner said.

The kitchen doesn’t have an industrial dishwasher. Trusties who do the dishes use a stove-like element submerged under the sink and a meat thermometer as a gauge to heat the water to the sterilization temperature required by the state.

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” said Fortner.

Crunch time

Space is a hot commodity. Some 30 employees — jailers, deputies and dispatchers — share 499 square feet.

Employees are ready to play musical chairs at a moment’s notice. For example, one room doubles as a break room, interview room, booking office, and changing room for inmates to strip down and put on their uniforms. If a detective is interviewing a crime witness when an inmate is brought in, they get kicked out.

So the detective moves the interview to the front office, kicking out the deputies until the interview is done. But if someone comes in to get a gun permit for example, the deputies have to kick the detective out. So the detective goes across the hall and kicks the sheriff out of his office. The only other office in the jail is the 911 dispatch center. They never get kicked out of their office.

The lack of a private interview room has hampered the ability to collect witness statements. People with information about a crime have been worried someone will see them coming and going. Sometimes deputies will meet people on back roads to get statements.

Outside the jail is equally cramped — hemmed in the center of downtown with narrow one-way alleys offering the only outlet. An inmate was having a seizure recently and needed an ambulance. But a delivery truck was blocking the alley into the jail and held up the ambulance until the deputies could get it moved.

Last year, a park ranger was hauling in an irate man charged with a DUI in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was the same day as the Christmas Parade in downtown Bryson City and the park ranger got trapped behind it.

“I had to say, ‘Look, the town’s shut down. There’s nothing I can do,’” Fortner recalled.

No place for people

Space is a problem when it comes to inmates as well. If multiple people are brought in for a crime, they have to be kept separate until booked and interviewed. But there’s only one official holding cell.

“We just stick them wherever we can stick them,” Fortner said. The non-official holding cells, like the visitation room or magistrates office, don’t have bathrooms, though, and inmates can be pretty intoxicated.

“Sometimes you have a mess,” Fortner said. The only holding cell with a bathroom is across from the 911 dispatch room. They tell the inmate in the holding cell if he needs to go, to let them know and they will take him to a private bathroom. But sometimes the inmate is too drunk to care and the dispatcher gets an unwanted show while taking 911 calls.

When there’s a drug roundup as a result of an undercover sting operation and as many as 10 people are hauled in, there just aren’t enough rooms and closets to put them in. So one officer is assigned to each inmate and guards them in vacant corners of the hallway until they are booked.

There’s only one room for inmate visitation. With up to 50 inmates, each one entitled to 10 to 15 minutes of visitation on visitation day, the process requires extra manpower.

“You have one jailer that does nothing but bring inmates up and down,” said Fortner.

Cells are overcrowded, too.

“If you have a big night, we put them on the floor,” Fortner said.

Female prisoners were a rarity when the jail was built. Now, their one cell is crammed with bunk beds and strewn with towels and clothing. But there’s nowhere else to put them. Female prisoners can’t be within earshot of a male prisoner.

Some male inmates have to be kept separate as well — such as 16- and 17-year-olds, or dangerous criminals. One man can monopolize an eight-person cell if all the single cells are occupied.

When five murders were committed in Haywood County by two men in 1999, one man was sent to Swain County so there was no chance of the two corroborating. For security, a deputy was assigned to sit on the floor outside the murderer’s cell 24-7.

For a county with only two deputies on duty at a time, it wasn’t an ideal use of resources, but there’s too much room for error in the outdated jail. A large control panel has a lever for each cell door. If the lever is in the up position, the door is locked — supposedly. The levers don’t work consistently.

“If there is a big fight in there and you have to tell people to get back in their cell, you have to go start shutting the doors manually. It’s a lot more dangerous,” said Jeff Chambers, the chief jailer.

That’s better than the isolation cell though, where the casing for the metal door had sagged and the door no longer opens and shuts properly.

“You had to sit there and kick on the door to open it. If you had to get in there in a hurry, you’re in trouble,” Chambers said.

The increase in female and male inmates has been exacerbated by the explosion of methamphetamines, the highly addictive crack-like drug made by combining and cooking household chemicals and medicines, then injecting the concoction into the bloodstream with a needle.

Inmates brought in for meth go through withdrawals, sometimes with severe physical symptoms. A doctor visits the jail twice a week. He sees inmates with health complaints in a storage room piled high with files and equipment.

Fit for a bulldozer

Fortner said the building is beyond repair after years of neglect from a county government unwilling to spend the necessary money.

“This jail has seen its day. It’s deteriorated, it’s old, it’s dilapidated and it’s dangerous,” said Fortner.

Walls in the basement — in essence the foundation — are eroding due to the constant flooding. Ceiling tiles fall down in big plops. On the top floor, the ceiling is covered in brown streaks, stains from the roof tar seeping down along with rainwater. Paint and plaster is peeling everywhere, but a new paint job is hopeless since the wall is peeling along with the paint. In fact, there are few elements that aren’t rusted, crumbling, eroding or stained from water damage.

“Nobody wants to think about their family member being incarcerated. But I wouldn’t want any of my family members in these conditions,” said Swain County Sheriff Bob Ogle.

It’s not a nice place to come to work every day either. A new jail would not only improve the safety of inmates, it would help retain employees.

“You can go to Jackson or Macon and make $2 to $3 more an hour and be in a nice facility,” said Fortner. “If you have a nice facility to work in, that does make a difference.

One good thing about the working conditions is the furniture. When the FBI closed down its temporary bureau in Andrews where the Eric Rudolph hunt was headquartered, they donated their desks to the Swain County sheriff’s office.