Heavy rain on Wednesday night sent water into parts of the Fulton County Jail on Rice Street, prompting deputies and inmates to move to higher-ground cells in the building and prompting a sharp public rebuke from Sheriff Patrick Labat over what he called the county’s failed effort to fix the aging facility.
The flooding was first reported by detention staff at about 9:30 p.m., after a slow-moving storm dropped more than 2 inches of rain in less than two hours across parts of downtown and South Atlanta. Water pooled in at least two housing units on the jail’s lower floors and in a maintenance corridor near the booking area, according to a statement from the Sheriff’s Office.
No inmates or staff were injured, the office said.
What happened
The Rice Street facility — which opened in 1989 and houses roughly 3,100 inmates on a normal day — is a five-story building with aging plumbing and a flat-roof drainage system that has been a recurring problem in heavy storms. Deputies said water began pooling in the C-pod and D-pod housing units on the building’s lower level shortly after 9 p.m., and that drainage in the corridor outside booking was backed up for more than an hour.
By 11 p.m., the worst of the flooding had receded and inmates had been moved to dry housing. Damage was limited to floor-level fixtures and flooring, the sheriff’s office said, and a structural engineer was on site Thursday morning to inspect.
“This is what happens when you tell us for years that the fix is coming, and the fix is not coming. The pipes are 36 years old. The roof is 36 years old. The planning is 36 years old.”
— Sheriff Patrick Labat, at a Thursday morning press conference
The county’s plan
Fulton County has spent the last three years on what officials have called a major capital improvement plan for the jail. As of mid-2025, the county had spent about $12.8 million on security and infrastructure upgrades, including new surveillance cameras, upgraded locking systems, and modest repairs to plumbing and HVAC.
But Labat told reporters Thursday that the plan, as currently structured, does not address the underlying physical plant. He said he has asked the county for months to authorize a more comprehensive assessment of the building’s plumbing and roof — an assessment he estimated would cost about $1.4 million but that the county has so far declined to fund.
“The improvements we’ve gotten so far are real and they’re welcome,” Labat said. “But they are improvements to the operating system. They are not improvements to the building itself. And the building is what failed last night.”
What the county says
In a statement Thursday afternoon, Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts acknowledged the flooding and said the county would “expedite” the comprehensive assessment Labat has been requesting.
“We owe the deputies and the people in our custody a facility that does not fail in the first heavy rain,” Pitts said. “That has not happened, and we are going to fix it.”
But Pitts also pushed back on Labat’s broader criticism, saying the sheriff’s office has been involved in every stage of the planning process and that some of the delays Labat is complaining about are the result of decisions the sheriff’s own staff has made.
The bigger picture
The flooding comes as the county is deep into a debate about the future of the jail itself.
Earlier this summer, advocates urged the Atlanta City Council to begin planning for a “staged withdrawal” of Fulton County inmates from the city’s downtown detention center, arguing that the Rice Street facility should be replaced rather than repaired. The proposal has been endorsed by several City Council members but has so far stalled.
Separately, county commissioners have been weighing a proposed $1.2 billion mental-health focused jail that would replace the Rice Street facility, a plan that has drawn both support and sharp criticism from criminal-justice reform advocates.
Samuel Okonkwo covers breaking news and public safety across metro Atlanta for WACN 21. Reach him at sokonkwo@wacn21.com.
