MT. CLEMENS – Macomb County’s courts and other departments are back to pen-and-paper operations after a fire at the old county building Wednesday wiped out the county’s servers and phone system. The county did not have a its data backed up off site.
?This is what we warned them about,? County Executive Mark Hackel told WWJ Newsradio in Detroit Thursday, referring to his warnings back in the 2000s, when he was county sheriff, about losing jail records in an earlier data system failure. ?What we explained could happen, did happen, and I think everybody?s now a believer.?
Hackel said county officials can?t turn their computers on to find out the extent of data and hardware damage because there?s no power to the data center. And power can?t be restored to the data center soon because of water still in the building.
?The county never had a backup site,? Hackel said.
Not that this helps much at the moment, but it will soon. Hackel said a plan to put a backup data center at the county jail building near Groesbeck Ave. at Elizabeth Road will continue. Temporarily, it will serve as the county?s primary data center.
Meanwhile, a more ambitious, $14 million plan to put a new data center, along with a new county communications center, at the Macomb County Road Commission at 117 S. Groesbeck in Mt. Clemens, will continue. Once complete ? currently scheduled by year?s end ? that will become the county?s primary data center.
Hackel said he didn?t yet have a time estimate as to when the county?s full data center operations might be back online. Nor could he estimate the cost of the damage caused by fire and water at the old county building. He declared a local state of emergency in the old building, which he said would help get the mess cleaned up more quickly.
