The tab for housing Escambia County inmates in other counties is mounting.

Ever since a natural gas leak caused an explosion at the Central Booking and Detention Facility on April 30, the county has been sending female inmates out of the county. Some 200 women from Escambia County are being housed either in Santa Rosa or Okaloosa county jails.

But a month after the explosion, the tally of expenses related to the matter still is not complete. And the cost is growing by the day.

County spokesman Bill Pearson says Okaloosa County is charging $46.90 per person per day. On Friday he estimated there were 50 Escambia County women being held in Okaloosa County.

“That covers food, lodging, required staffing and any basic medical needs they have,” Pearson said. “If they need to be transported to a hospital, that could be billed to us.”

The explosion at Central Booking came on the heels of historic rainfall that flooded the basement of the facility, which housed some 607 people at the time, killed two inmates, paralyzed a corrections officer and injured 184 people.

Male inmates are in either the main jail, the road prison in Cantonment or the work-release center on Fairfield Drive. Before the explosion, the county’s corrections facilities had a capacity of 1,422 people, Pearson said.

Escambia officials are waiting to get information from Santa Rosa officials on what the cost will be from their facility to house our inmates.

Pearson says the cost estimate from Santa Rosa is complicate because that county contracts out medical services at their jail.

“We’re asking them for one price for housing and medical care,” Pearson said.

To try to help control those costs, Pearson says Escambia County has sent corrections officers from this county to Santa Rosa to watch Escambia inmates who are in their jail.

But that can’t last forever.

“We are stretched thin all around,” Pearson said. “That’s part of the issue and why we want to get this resolved.

“(Okaloosa and Santa Rosa officials) have been fantastic,” he said. “We couldn’t be more grateful to them for helping us in our time of need.”

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