From South Carolina Radio Network
South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division officials say they hope to have a critical DUI evidence server back online next month. But, in the meantime, they are letting judges know that prosecutors and defense attorneys will not be able to access the system until next month.

SLED spokesman Thom Berry said the server has been down since July 5, when officials believe lightning struck a power transformer located at the agency’s headquarters.

“We noticed that transformer was leaking. The power company came out, inspected it, and said the transformer was damaged and needed to be replaced. That has been done,” he told South Carolina Radio Network. “But… what (we believe) happened was the lightning strike then came in to the uninterruptible power supply unit and literally fried one of the rectifier units.”

He said that unit provides backup power for the offices. In order to avoid later problems, SLED officials decided to take all of their servers offline until the device could be repaired. Most were back online within a few hours, but the “Implied Consent” server took longer.

The Implied Consent server houses all dash camera videos and breath test results from DUI cases dating back to 1991. “We are in the process of bringing the server back online slowly,” Berry said. ”It’s not as simple as just throwing a switch and getting everything immediately back online. It has to be brought back slowly.”

He said none of the recorded files were lost. ….MORE