Markeshia Ricks Photo
Turcio on site Monday.
A busted pipe at the Strouse Adler apartment complex — the result of unpermitted work — has forced some tenants to move to hotels.
City Building Official Jim Turcio had power cut to the building at the converted factory at 78 Olive St. Monday after a plumber making a repair to a water heater in a third-floor apartment cut the wrong pipe and flooded several apartments on the third floor and all the apartments and hallways beneath them.
“The water ran through three floors and got to all the electrical wiring,” Turcio said while on site. “A good portion of the building will be un-occupiable.”
A representative with PMC Group said that the leak was under control and that the company was waiting for word from the city about when the electricity might be restored.
Turcio ordered the building’s owner, the PMC Property Group, to put the occupants of four apartments up in hotel rooms while making emergency repairs. Turcio said that could take a while.
“We’ve got to rip out the walls and check all the electricals” to inspect, Turcio said.
“They didn’t have a permit to install the hot-water heater that caused all this.”
Tenant Chad Sagnella (pictured) and his roommate, who preferred not to be identified, were left cooling their heels Monday afternoon while they waited to hear from PMC.
Sagnella, an emergency room physician, said he got an emergency call about the flood issue while he was at work. He found about a foot of water in the apartment when he arrived.
Sagnella said he and his roommate were out of town over the weekend and actually came home to no running water. Maintenance personnel had been in their apartment working on the water heater and shut off the water.
The pair have been calling management to find out what is going to happen to them and their stuff, but they’ve not heard anything back, they said.
The flood not only damaged books on bottom shelves in the apartment, but soaked clothes and shoes on the floor. It also damaged a laptop that was on the floor. To help the water drain, their toilet was ripped out and moved.
Sagnella said he’s been living in the Strouse-Adler building for nearly four years. He called the flood just one more in a long list of problems he has experienced since he moved in, including unresponsive management, elevators that work only occasionally, stolen packages and the fact that someone allowed a dog to poop in a stairwell near their apartment and management still hasn’t cleaned it up.
“There has been feces sitting in the hallway for weeks,” he said. “We don’t have a dog.”
Sagnella said he hopes that management would move quickly to get them into a hotel and that repairs could be made quickly and the floor dried and replaced. He wasn’t very optimistic. “They could at least come up and say, ‘I’m sorry,’” he said.
PMC is currently suing the city to try to stop a competing apartment complex from being built across the street.