NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Things are starting to cool off after a week’s worth of record-breaking temperatures, but it is still plenty hot at several New Orleans’ city buildings struggling with air conditioning problems.
“The overall issues is our facilities,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.
A decades old problem at old buildings are to blame for the lack of air conditioning in several city buildings. The main library branch Downtown, Keller Library in Broadmoor, Latter Library in Uptown, the NOPD’s 6th District police station, NOPD Headquarters’ Evidence complex are all without air conditioning. Even Civil District Court had to shut down recently because of no A/C.
“The heat has had a tremendous impact,” Cantrell said.
For weeks now, many of these buildings haven’t had air conditioning. Cantrell says they are working to solve the problem.
“One, we are holding the current vendor accountable, but we also recognize that there’s a lack of capacity, so we’ve had to move forward with the process to hire additional vendors,” she said.
Cantrell went on to say at a press conference, “To ensure we have multiple vendors that we can call so they have capacity to fix these issues that we have at multiple locations.”
The problem isn’t an easy fix, like at NOPD’s evidence room.
“It was repaired, only to break down again. As it relates to the evidence room, they are being able to move evidence,” Cantrell said.
And it is evident that there’s a desperate need to keep it cool.
“This isn’t just one fix. It is multiple, and it requires us to ramp up,” Cantrell said.
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