He Wasn’t Exaggerating

Out walking early one morning this last week, I saw two big trucks come through the gate. The signage indicated the trucks were involved in the business of property restoration – water damage, fire damage, etc.

Hmmm, wonder what that’s about, thought I.

Next day out walking, I saw one of our residents had been displaced. Her doors and windows were open, some of her things were positioned on the patio railing as though they’d been hung out to dry, and I could hear a roaring sound coming from her unit which I recognized to be one of those industrial sized air blowers.

Putting two and two together, I figured the resident had water damage from letting the sink or the tub overrun.

Running into the Head Maintenance Man later in the day, I inquired and learned the resident had awakened at 2:30 in the morning, stepped out of bed and found herself swimming in what I thought I heard him say was “Five feet of water”. That a pipe underneath the building had burst, flooded her unit and she was now staying with a sister until everything could be sorted out.

Sounds like she woke up and found herself experiencing Katrina. Hope she’s got homeowner’s insurance cause, for sure, management isn’t going to accept any kind of responsibility for this – other than new paint, new carpet … and I wonder about mole damage.

At any rate, when I thought about it later, I convinced myself I’d heard incorrectly. That it could not possibly have been “Five feet of water” ... he must have said “Five inches”. That is until I saw the carpet people come in this morning and move her furnishings out of the way.

I'd not heard incorrectly and Head Maintenance Guy wasn’t exaggerating.

You can see where the water was so high that it either reached the table top or the water level lifted and caused the table to topple over into the water. Also, you can’t tell from the photo – because it’s in the shade, but the back of the piece behind the table has buckled and is coming apart at least five feet up from water damage.

Not only that, but the water spilled over to the neighbor on the back side of that unit, causing her to also be displaced.

This second neighbor has a piece of furniture that looks remarkably similar to the piece the other neighbor has and, on this photo, you can clearly see how high up the water came.

Wonder if and how the other four bottom units in that building managed to escape damage.

I also wonder if either resident will return, as I passed Nurse Ratched in conversation with Head Maintenance Guy about an hour ago. She was very animated – the word Drama Queen comes to mind and was saying, “We can’t do this. I’ll call the relatives and tell them to come get all this stuff, because we can’t.”

I’m thinking she wants them to come take the damaged furniture away.

Always something going on around here -- not activities, just stuff.