When Hurricane Michael tore through our area, it made no exceptions.

Among the many damaged facilities was the Bay County Jail.

Keith Bryant, Bay County Public Works Director, said, "The jail took a pretty big hit. We have a 250,000 square foot roof that is gonna need to be replaced. About 90 percent of the air conditioning units were destroyed and will have to be replaced. The fencing... several areas of the fence took damage from trees."

As a result, approximately 250 inmates were released over the course of three days within a week after the hurricane hit.

The jail's warden, Major Rick Anglin, says they strive to provide livable conditions for the inmates. But following the hurricane, parts of the jail couldn't even meet those standards.

Anglin said, "We're not here to necessarily make them comfortable, but we want them to be liveable. So in order to do that we need to make one dorm in particular... we needed to empty that dorm out so in order to do that we needed room."

Anglin says the inmates released were carefully chosen and approved by a judge.

"For the most part, these were people that were going to be getting out of jail at some point anyway. A lot of them were sentenced and if they were close to being released on a sentence date the judge went ahead and approved them to be released," he explained.

Anglin added that on average, 45 inmates leave the jail daily. As of this morning, 861 inmates still reside at the jail.