Trumbull County commissioners order staff sent home after sewer-maintenance fumes enter county buildings
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Summary
County commissioners held an emergency meeting and voted unanimously to send employees home after chemical fumes from sewer maintenance in Warren permeated county offices, prompted reports of nausea and led to air monitoring at the county jail; maintenance shut down air intake and Servpro was contracted to assess air quality.
The Trumbull County Board of Commissioners voted in an emergency session to send county employees home after strong fumes from sewer maintenance work in nearby Warren entered county buildings and caused reported nausea among staff.
An unnamed commissioner who moved the action said workers were experiencing "some nausea and people with chemical reactions not feeling well," and proposed evacuating staff immediately "for the safety of them to evacuate this building." The motion, seconded by another unidentified attendee, was approved with commissioners indicating assent on a roll-call-style response.
The board directed that the county coordinate with the city of Warren and engage Servpro, a disaster-recovery contractor, to monitor indoor air quality at county facilities and at the adjoining county jail. The mover noted the jail is connected to county facilities and said the sheriff would take all precautions needed to protect inmates if air monitoring found unsafe conditions. The sheriff addressed the meeting and supported protective measures for both employees and inmates.
County maintenance staff, identified in the meeting as supervised by Daryl, reported shutting down the building's air intake and checking basement traps and other potential entry points to limit fume intrusion. The commissioners were told the smell persisted but that precautions were in place; a county maintenance return time of 8:30 a.m. the following workday was mentioned for planning purposes.
Commissioners said Warren officials informed them the odor resulted from routine sewer-line maintenance by a private contractor, and that the city had personnel on site to manage the incident. Eddie Colbert of Warren was named in the discussion as a city contact who advised county officials.
The board convened under the emergency meeting statute (as discussed in the session) and said the media had been notified in keeping with the Sunshine Law Act. After taking the emergency action and confirming monitoring and maintenance steps, an attendee moved and the commissioners agreed to adjourn the meeting.
Not all details discussed in the meeting were precise: the motion as stated in the transcript included inconsistent timing language about sending employees "home for the remainder of the day for the next 2 hours." That phrasing was recorded verbatim and is reported here as spoken; the county did not provide a clarified, single-duration in the record. The commissioners also did not provide a detailed timetable for reoccupation beyond the maintenance staff return window noted above.
The county listed Servpro for on-site monitoring and said it would follow up with staff and the sheriff's office if air-monitoring results required further action. No formal ordinances, resolutions, or budget votes were introduced during the emergency meeting.
