The Beaufort County jail has no inmates.

On Thursday and Friday of last week, all inmates incarcerated at the Beaufort County Detention Center were moved to other facilities. Some have been transferred to surrounding counties, others to Manteo, still others will by staying in North Carolina Department of Corrections facilities, according to Beaufort County Manager Brian Alligood.

Today, construction crews begin demolition work in the jail, which is located in the basement of the Beaufort County Courthouse. Though the jail has long been plagued with problematic inspections, last year, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter to Sheriff Ernie Coleman threatening to shut down the facility unless one particular issue was fixed: a steel plate removed from the ceiling and up-to-code fireproofing installed between the jail ceiling and the first floor of the courthouse.

“We’ve been essentially told by the state we have to fix this,” Alligood said in an interview last June.

Alligood said the jail will be empty of inmates for four to six weeks. For those arrested in Beaufort County, the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office has set up a temporary holding cell.

“They will have an active holding cell for the short term,” Alligood said. “If they are going to stay in confinement, then they will be moved out to another facility.”

Alligood said he did not know how the relocation of inmates would impact inmate-lawyer communication, but deputies would be ferrying inmates to their court dates in Beaufort County from their current facilities elsewhere.

The county budgeted $275,000 in the 2017-18 budget to pay for inmates’ safekeeping during construction, according to Anita Radcliffe, Beaufort County’s chief financial officer.

Construction begins today with the electricians. The steel plate that must be replaced by adequate fireproofing was installed in the early 2000s after inmates made the discovery they could crawl up into the ceiling. They began making afterhours visits to the nurse’s office to steal medicines, and two inmates ultimately escaped from the jail that maner. The steel plate was installed to prevent further escapes.

Since, DHHS inspectors have taken exception to the lack of fireproofing and finally ordered it fixed, else risk being shut down. However, in the course of determining how it should be fixed, county officials discovered the entire courthouse lacked fire-rated ceilings, a fact that Alligood said then, and reiterated now, that they still don’t know how it happened. The courthouse’s original plans call for fire-rated gypsum board as part of the ceiling construction. It remains unclear whether the courthouse ever had fire-rated ceilings, or whether they had been removed at some point.

The replacement of spray foam fireproofing throughout the courthouse will cost the county an estimated $500,000.