City officials said preliminary findings indicate the cause of the fire was an unintentional electrical failure that started in the office of the human resources department. Significant smoke and water damage prevented all City Hall offices from opening Aug. 22, and officials said the building is expected to remain closed for several weeks pending a structural evaluation.
Richardson City Manager Don Magner said during the regularly scheduled Aug. 22 council meeting that disaster recovery teams are working on solutions to restore services as soon as possible.
During the fire, all phone services for city facilities and campuses were damaged. In response, Richardson has created a temporary 24-hour response center phone number, 972-744-5690, for residents to use in any non-emergency situation. Magner said this number will remain available until the city’s phone services are restored.
All 911 dispatch operations are operating normally and phone lines into the police and fire headquarters are functioning.
With the building unable to function, city officials have set up a temporary site for city hall services at the Ray Noah Municipal Court Building, 2100 E. Campbell Road. The building is expected to be open and available for temporary service from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. starting Aug. 24.
According to Magner, the temporary City Hall will offer the following services: building inspection, code enforcement, development/engineering services, the health department and water customer service.
According to city officials, here is a list of protocols Richardson will be enacting until further notice:
- Until the city’s regular permit request system is back online, requests for building inspections can be made by emailing [email protected] or calling the response center line.
- Residents do not need to put in requests for brush and bulky item collection services. Crews will automatically pick up acceptable material without requests for service. Beginning Aug. 23, Richardson crews will patrol collection zones to find locations where residents have placed material needing to be picked up.
- There will be no late fees or other impacts to water service or service billing until the payment systems can be restored.
