Former Police Department Staff Members Describe Poor Conditions And "LORAN Flu" In Dormitories

When Erin Sullivan joined the Nantucket Police Department in the summer of 2022 as a community service officer, she was not only excited to start her career in law enforcement, but also to live and work on Nantucket. When she found out the police department's dormitory facilities were located right on the beach in 'Sconset, her excitement only grew.

But then she arrived at the so-called LORAN barracks, the former U.S. Coast Guard base in 'Sconset that the town has used to house its summer police force for decades, and her excitement quickly faded.

"I was expecting the living situation to be clean and tidy, a reflection of what you are supposed to show the public," Sullivan told the Current. "This was not the case. I arrived and was met with a concrete building that looked like it had been abandoned both inside and out. Not what I was expecting, especially because Nantucket is supposed to be so beautiful."

Inside the female barracks, Sullivan said the conditions were shockingly poor, and over the next three months, they caused her and other CSOs to become sick.

"In addition to mold, dust, grime, broken tiles, plants growing through the pipes and coming out underneath the sink, the shower full of black mold and grimy conditions to make yourself 'clean,' there were also bugs, flies, spiders; it was muggy, hot, and clammy," she said. "In my short amount of time living in the Loran, I was prescribed an inhaler - that I still need - due to multiple upper respiratory and breathing ailments that occurred only after living there. I had pneumonia, bronchitis, multiple bad colds, which we called 'the Loran Flu'."

Sullivan is among several current and former Nantucket community service officers, police officers, and residents of the LORAN barracks who spoke with the Current over the past two months following the town's closure of the barracks in September due to mold complaints and health code violations discovered during a Health Department inspection. While those problems have only recently come to light, they said the conditions at the LORAN barracks have been deplorable for years.

"It's a beautiful location, but the building was tired even back then," said former Nantucket Police Department officer Ryan Killeen, who lived at the LORAN barracks during the summer of 2011. "The mold was the reason I moved out in September of that year. I left for a weekend and came back to the same greenish fuzzy mold on my belongings."

Fourteen years later, residents of the LORAN barracks described similar conditions during the summer of 2025, according to internal emails obtained by the Nantucket Current through a Freedom of Information Act request.

A female CSO started complaining about mold on July 31, 2025, when she emailed her superiors photos of a jacket with mold growing on it. After that initial message, the problems apparently grew worse.

"I wanted to follow up with this message because the mold is getting worse. Multiple girls have sent me pictures of mold on clothing and other items in their rooms," wrote the female CSO just 10 days later on Aug. 10th, 2025, in an email to Ardis Gary, who serves as an IT administrator with the Nantucket Police Department and appears to have served as the liaison between the residents of the LORAN barracks and deputy police chief Charles Gibson, according to the internal communications reviewed by the Current. "Some of the girls have told me they are getting sick from it as well. Do you know when the contractor will be able to look into this issue?"

In an internal email to Nantucket Police sergeants on Aug. 12th, Gary wrote that "It was a swift decision by the Deputy to deal with the mold that was growing in the building."

But just two days later, on August 14, another resident of the LORAN barracks wrote in an email to both Gary and Gibson that "a few more of the girls have gotten sick due to the mold. They have been to the hospital and will be returning there for follow ups."

Shortly thereafter, the female CSOs were moved to the male dormitory across the parking lot. Gary wrote to the female CSO who reported the mold on Aug. 18th, stating that he had gone through the building with contractors who "concluded that the system was working properly from their end. They have made some changes that should reduce the chances of mold growing again." He advised the CSO to keep the windows shut, that "the fan must remain on," and that they should keep their doors closed to help with dehumidification. "The Deputy has other contractors coming back to finish the work on that side so no one would be allowed to move back in," he added.

But the situation appears to have come to a head less than a month later on September 6th, when a male CSO emailed Sgt. John Rockett to report that his room had become "infested."

"I wanted to inform you of the current situation at the Loran," the CSO wrote. "When I arrived back at the Loran I discovered my room had been infested with a bunch of tiny bugs I believe to be mold mites. This issue has ruined a lot if not all my belongings in the room. As well as my uniform, boots and helmet."

The following day, another LORAN barracks resident emailed Gibson, Gary, and Rockett to report that "The issue now is that surfaces are covered in mold mites. Several employees this summer went to the ER for mold related sicknesses and all of this was reported and denied by the HVAC company findings. It is an impossibility to say nothing is wrong and that it is because windows were left open or the building is dirty. Everyone is asking if there is a plan for relocation today? This building is just not habitable anymore, and I don't know what to tell the residents at this point."

That week, the Nantucket Police Department made the decision to relocate all of the remaining CSOs at the LORAN barracks to the new lifeguard housing building on Waitt Drive.

"It is disappointing, negligent and shameful," said a resident of the LORAN barracks who lived there in 2024 and 2025 and asked to remain anonymous. "The Loran clearly is not fit to house anyone, especially 30 to 40 residents year after year, but they continue to do it. It appeared as though every single complaint raised by the residents or RAs was immediately flipped back around at the CSOs as if it was our own problem or that we were the cause of it. Instead of working towards actual solutions and providing habitable housing, we were silenced and hidden."

Despite the documents, complaints, and apparent acknowledgment by the police administration of the mold issues the CSOs were dealing with over the summer, Nantucket Select Board chair Dawn Hill Holdgate addressed the situation and the Current's Sept. 18th report by stating at a public meeting on Oct. 22: "Contrary to a published news article, there was no mold found in either building, nor was there any mention of mold in the Health Department report."

While it is true that the Health Department's report on its inspection, conducted on Sept. 10, 2025, did not include any findings of mold in the LORAN barracks, it documented numerous other health code violations, including:

• Non-working bathroom fans
• Cracked and missing bathroom tiles
• Non-compliant shower heads
• Missing window screens
• Defective ceiling tiles
• Missing kitchen floor tiles

"I think that they are asking a lot out of CSOs fresh out of or still in college - to suck it up and live in the conditions that were depressing, disgusting, and almost insulting," said Sullivan, the CSO who lived at the barracks in 2022. "Seeing the lifeguard housing and hearing about how wonderful all of their housing has been and the lower rent, it was gut-wrenching that the police department threw us out in Sconset for a hefty price for what we got. It felt like they did not care about where we lived. This is not a statement to be said lightly. Many, many, many of the full-time officers do care. I fear it may be the administration at NPD that does not care."

During her time living at the barracks, Sullivan stated she was prescribed to use an inhaler due to multiple upper respiratory and breathing ailments, including pneumonia and bronchitis. She was also prescribed an inhaler. Since she left the Nantucket Police Department, Sullivan has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

"I had extensive gene testing and studies done after my diagnosis," she said. "Everything came back negative for any and all cancers. Breast cancer does not occur anywhere in my family’s genetic history, and I tested negative for BRCA genes, and breast cancer was not on my radar as a 22-year-old in perfect health. The only thing left to turn to would be the worst luck of all time, or the environment I exposed myself to and lived in. This is a heavy and extremely serious accusation, so with that being said, while I am not saying that it was the cause of my cancer, I am also not saying that it was not the cause of my cancer."

While the mold issue reached critical mass over the summer of 2025, the problems at the LORAN dormitories have been evident for years. An engineering report in 2021 revealed failed underground sewer piping, significant amounts of hazardous materials such as asbestos and lead paint, along with cracks in the concrete block exterior. In response, the town sponsored a debt-exclusion override proposal to allocate $4.5 million to cover the costs of interior and exterior repairs, the mitigation of hazardous materials, the removal of the septic system, and a connection to the town's sewer system.

The warrant article was approved by Town Meeting voters in 2022 and passed on a subsequent ballot vote, and the work began later that year. Contractors completed numerous repairs at both dorms, including removal of asbestos floor tiles, window and door replacements, a roof replacement, and kitchen renovations.

In response to the Current's September 2025 story about the LORAN barracks, the town released detailed information in October regarding the $4.5 million renovation project, which involved several contractors and was conducted in phases to allow the dormitories to remain in use each summer. The information also included a history of the barracks and plans for future maintenance efforts.

But for those living in the dorms in 2025, the amount of money poured into the barracks came as a surprise, given the conditions of the buildings.

"How a $4.5 million renovation does not update both buildings fully will always blow my mind," said the LORAN barracks resident who lived there in 2024 and 2025. "We are not talking about new construction; we are talking about a renovation of existing structures. It is my understanding that the septic is still failed as well. I am disappointed in the Town of Nantucket and the Nantucket Police Department. They should be ashamed by their actions. Not one of us received an apology or an admission of guilt. Instead, we got blamed. Furthermore, multiple employees who worked here last winter and planned on doing the same this winter, have had their employment terminated which includes their housing in this terrible housing crisis. I wish the Loran never existed."

The Nantucket Police Department declined to comment for this story.

Perhaps in response to the recent attention on the LORAN barracks, the Select Board has taken the unusual step of scheduling a meeting at the dormitories this Thursday, at 1 p.m., to participate in a tour of the facilities with Nantucket Police Department Chief Jody Kasper and Deputy Chief Charles Gibson. The meeting and tour are open to the public.