ATHENS, Tenn. — The Athens Police Department lost six months’ worth of warrants, arrest reports and other police information when a power spike blew out a computer in late July, officials said.

City Manager Mitchell Moore said police records stored on a Communications Department server may be irretrievable. Police Chief Chuck Ziegler said arrest reports, warrants and other records may have to be reconstructed from paper documents.

“The city did not have a protocol for offsite backup,” said Chris White, a spokesman for the company contracted to install new police department computers. The company, KGW of Chattanooga, previously updated computers in the city’s financial department.

City Councilwoman Shannon Alvey said she learned about the damage last week from a local resident and began asking questions.

“To my knowledge this was never brought up at a meeting,” she said.

In a letter to Mrs. Alvey, Mr. Moore said the system “was ready and scheduled for replacement.” The council voted in July to replace the computer system but did not discuss costs.

Mr. Moore said the system used a tape backup and that a communications server failed in the power surge. He confirmed Tuesday that one part of the system was surge protected, but another side was not and the surge went through the entire system.

Mr. White said the new system will be protected against power surges and will send all information to an offsite backup unit that wouldn’t be affected if the city system goes down.

Mr. Moore said the damaged hard drives are being reviewed to see if the stored data can be recovered. He said he hopes at least some information can be retrieved.

The power failure was one of two during the last week in July that knocked out power to all of Athens.

Both happened when TVA workers were doing repairs.

Athens Utilities Board spokesman Wayne Scarbrough said workers followed a written protocol for the work, but investigators discovered the protocol was written incorrectly.

He said AUB officials recently met with TVA CEO Tom Kilgore.

He said TVA is investigating to find out why the procedure was written incorrectly.

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