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City Hall shuts down for two days due to broken A/C

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Long Beach City Hall closed for two days last week amid issues with the building’s problem-plagued air-conditioning system forced hundreds of employees to head home during the sweltering summer heat.

City Hall closed on July 19, and for half of the day on July 21, as workers repaired the broken system, during a week when the National Weather Service issued a heat advisory and the lack of cool air created intolerable conditions for employees and others in the building.

“People were frying this morning,” City Councilwoman Anissa Moore said on July 19. “It was horrible in there — unbearable.”

Department of Public Works employees and contractors worked on fixing the circulating system throughout the weekend to ensure that City Hall would be open for regular operations on Monday, said Gordon Tepper, a spokesman for the city.

“Underground pipes were damaged by saltwater from [Hurricane] Sandy,” City Manager Jack Schnirman said on Monday, adding that repairs were continuing. “[Workers were] excavating the lobby floor to find the leaks. The A/C is not running at full blast but is now functioning again.”

Residents inquired about the building’s air conditioning system at the July 18 City Council meeting, and were told that the system had been fixed despite the ongoing issues.

The Police Department and Fire Department headquarters, behind City Hall, uses a separate air conditioning system that is also being repaired, and has not worked for two consecutive summers, according to Kenny Apple, president of the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association.

The city installed a temporary fix, city officials said at the City Council meeting, using pipes that run through the ceiling ducts to manually create airflow throughout the building.

But Apple said that it was still hot. “They haven’t told us what’s wrong with the system,” he said. “It’s not just our personnel — there’s civilian personnel working in here with us, prisoners in the precinct — it’s not just limited to my members.”

A member of the Fire Department, who declined to be identified, said last week that the building’s temporary air-conditioning system is not pumping cold air and is essentially a big fan. When it was pumping cold air earlier this month, it flooded the fire station with water, and has not pumped cold air since. Department of Public Works Commissioner John Mirando said at the council meeting that the city was addressing those problems. “We budgeted in the capital budget $350,000 to replace the HVAC system in the police and Fire Department completely,” Mirando said. “We’ll put that contract together, and it will probably go out for bid in the fall once the summer season is over.”