Dallas County Computer System Back Online & Midday Roundup

By KERA News & Wire Services

Dallas, TX – Most of Dallas County's computer systems are back up and operating after flooding earlier in the week in the county records building. County Commissioner John Wiley Price said Friday that the computer systems are "as normal as can be" following a water main break that left six feet of water in the basement of the Dallas
County Records Building late Monday and early Tuesday.

The water flooded county electrical systems, forcing technicians to shut down the servers. The shutdown forced officials to book inmates in and out of the county jail manually and slowed down operations at the courthouse.

A 2008 consultant advised the county to have a backup plan for its computer systems. Such an offsite location would have keep the computers up and running.

Redistricting work gets under way in Texas

Texas legislators are going to travel around the state to talk redistricting.

The House redistricting committee and judiciary and civil jurisprudence committee will hold joint meetings on the subject that will occupy much of the 2011 legislative session. The first hearing outside of Austin is June 21 in San Antonio.

House Speaker Joe Straus' office said Friday the two committees will work together on the issue. Each decade, lawmakers draw new boundary lines for state legislative and congressional districts based on new census data.

A legislative memo says other hearings are planned for McAllen,Laredo and Corpus Christi in July; El Paso and Lubbock in August; Dallas, Richardson and Fort Worth in September; Beaumont and Marshall in October; and Houston and Austin in November.

The committees met this week in Austin.

Worker dies at north Texas gas drilling site

Two agencies are investigating whether safety rules were followed after a man died while working at a gas
well drilling site. Silverio Rubio-Loredo was pronounced dead Wednesday night at the site near Eagle Mountain Lake, northwest of Fort Worth.

Tarrant County Sheriff's Office spokesman Terry Grisham says the 25-year-old man was working at an elevated position when a piece of equipment hit him in the head.

Grisham says the man did not fall to the ground because he was wearing a safety harness.

The Texas Railroad Commission and Occupational Safety and Health Administration are investigating.

The commission says XTO Energy is the well operator at the site, and the man worked for a contractor, Express Energy.

Oswald's getaway cab to be auctioned in Texas

The Checker cab once known as Lee Harvey Oswald's getaway car is going up on the auction block.

Cab 36 will be sold Saturday along with the rest of the collection from the defunct Pate Museum of Transportation in Cresson, about 17 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

RM Auctions car specialist Donnie Gould says the cab is "a big piece of history." He estimates it will fetch around $30,000. That's far more than the nickel Oswald paid for his 95-cent cab fare on Nov. 22, 1963.

Oswald hailed the cab after the bus he tried to escape in got stuck in traffic moments after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot.

Oswald is accused of assassinating Kennedy, having fired the fatal shot from the sixth floor window of the old Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.