Changes are afoot at Butler County Prison to prevent another event like the one last week, when six employees were taken to the hospital after coming into contact with an unknown substance.

Warden Joe DeMore gave a report Tuesday at the monthly prison board meeting, which is comprised of the county commissioners, district attorney, county controller, the sheriff and Judge William Shaffer.

DeMore said at 6 p.m. Aug. 14, he received a call from a sergeant at the jail that two correctional officers were ill after being exposed to an unknown substance.

He immediately emailed the commissioners and 15 minutes later, two more officers and two nurses began experiencing symptoms.

At 6:30 p.m. that day, DeMore said, the employees were taken by ambulance to Butler Memorial Hospital. One officer, DeMore said, nearly passed out in the ambulance and paramedics said he would have been revived with Narcan had he lost consciousness.

DeMore said although the jail has never experienced such an employee exposure, everyone involved worked together like clockwork as the situation unfolded.

“Just the fluid movement of our team was amazing,” he said.

The county Hazardous Materials and Community Emergency Response teams as well as Steve Bicehouse, county emergency manager, came to the jail after the incident.

The Hazmat Team tested the air with a meter and prison staff talked to inmates, but no information on what the substance could have been was gained.

“We are still awaiting the results from the hospital on blood work (from the victims),” DeMore said.

But he stressed that the synthetic marijuana that is suspected of causing the incident is difficult to find via blood testing because a trace amount that is inhaled won't show up in the results.

DeMore said he thinks the employees were sickened by one officer accidentally touching synthetic marijuana, also known as K-2, and then coming into contact with the others.

He said the inmates were not sickened, which could be attributed to their systems being accustomed to the drug or the symptoms being the “high” drug users look for in K-2.

The symptoms reported by those sickened last week at the jail include grogginess, elevated heart rate, pinpoint pupils and a burning nose and throat.

“One of the nurses actually had a bloody nose,” DeMore said.

After the jail was thoroughly searched by canines and decontaminated, DeMore began thinking about preventing substances from entering the jail again.

He said the State Correctional Institute in Westmoreland County makes a copy of all inmate mail, disposes of the original and gives the copies to the inmates.

The problem is the procedure cannot be carried out on mail from the inmates' lawyers or courts because state law does not permit jail personnel to look at the inmates' legal mail.

Some facilities have seen mail that appears to be legal and is actually fake and doused with K-2.

DeMore said many prisons are considering providing electronic tablets to prisoners where they would receive and reply to all mail, both regular and legal.

“This will be a big trend,” DeMore said.

One way K-2 is entering correctional facilities, DeMore said, is through books with pages that are sprayed with the drug. DeMore is now in contact with the jail's commissary regarding providing books to prisoners so they cannot be tampered with by those outside the jail.

Beau Sneddon, deputy warden at the jail, said K-2 is hard to find because the inmates' cells are messy, or because it can arrive in the mail.

He said paper sprayed with K-2 feels a little softer and more pliable than regular paper, and the letters look a little different from normal.

A paper held up under a bright light will often reveal the area of the paper that has been sprayed, Sneddon said.

To hide the paper, he said, inmates will wrinkle it up and throw it in the garbage or toilet.

Rich Goldinger, the district attorney, asked if a criminal investigation is under way. DeMore replied that the FBI, state police and county detectives are involved in an investigation.

DeMore asked prison board members if they agreed to allow the inmates to receive copies of their regular mail and for him to work on getting tablets for inmate communication.

All agreed the measures are a good start in keeping the prison staff and population safe.

Commissioner Kevin Boozel recommended that the costs to the county associated with an event like the one last week be assessed to the inmate as restitution.

“This is definitely a wake-up call,” he said of last week's event.

DeMore said keeping ahead of the drug masterminds who create and constantly change the makeup of synthetic drugs is a difficult task.

“They have a lot of time to think and manipulate the system,” he said.

Leslie Osche, commissioners chairman, was pleased with DeMore's report on Tuesday.

“It's clear that they have already addressed concerns and are working in the region in both the prison system as well as with our emergency response system,” she said. “I'm fully confident the situation is being handled in the best way possible.”