A broken heating unit at the Carbon County prison is causing problems as frigid weather settles into the area.

On Thursday, the Carbon County Commissioners adopted a disaster emergency proclamation for the issue at the correctional facility. Commissioner Rocky Ahner was absent.

Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said that a decade-old heating unit in the women’s block failed at approximately 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

Because of this, 22 female inmates are affected and need to be either relocated from that block or a temporary solution found since parts for the unit will take approximately six to eight weeks for delivery.

The proclamation says this issue “has endangered the health and safety or threatens to cause suffering to the inmates … and may create problems greater in scope than Carbon County may be able to resolve.”

Nothstein said with the extreme cold weather coming in this weekend, the county has brought in two electrical heaters and the Emergency Management Agency delivered additional blankets until a more permanent solution is found.

He said some of the inmates were moved to the medical facility of the prison, but there were already a few inmates in that facility in isolation because of COVID.

County and prison officials spoke about many options, including, if absolutely necessary, trying to move inmates to other prisons, which would be “extremely expensive” and may not even be an option due to the pandemic.

“Will they even accept them because of the COVID situation right now?” Nothstein said. “We’re looking at all possible emergency procedures and things that we can do.”

Mark Nalesnik, director of the Carbon EMA, is working with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency on finding solutions, such as getting emergency COVID testing done if the inmates can be moved to another facility, as well as rental of additional electrical heaters.

Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said Warden James Youngkin is also working on contacting other facilities to see what requirements they have to be able to take Carbon inmates at this time.

The county is also working with the courts to see if any new sentences of females can be delayed until the problem is resolved.

“We’re looking at what we can do to reduce that number of people,” Nothstein said, adding that they were hoping that a temporary solution will be found quickly until the unit can be fixed.

In other heating issues, the Emergency Management Agency and 911 communications center had a hiccup with heating on Wednesday as well, but that issue has been corrected.

Gary Williams, 911 director, said that an HVAC unit had recently been replaced and a programmable thermostat was installed.

Officials in the building were unaware that it was programmed to stop at certain times and, on Wednesday, the furnace was off.

Williams was able to override the thermostat and programming error and said a new “non-programmable thermostat” will be installed.