January 14, 2010: Meeting Neighbours

I was up at six thirty again this morning.  Unlike yesterday, no one woke up while I was getting ready and I left the house at a quarter till eight and no one else was even awake yet.  This is the earliest that I will have physically made it into the Irving office yet.

It was overcast but moderately warm on my walk over to the office.  Manny picked up bagels just minutes before I arrived which was great.  Nice to have bagels right as you arrive at the office.  And Monday is a holiday too so bagels and a three day weekend!  Who could ask for more.

I managed to finally get SGL back up to date today.  That was no small task.  I have more availability to work on it during the day now and things have settled down a lot more so, fingers crossed, it should stay roughly up to date from this point forward.

Today, on my way walking home from lunch going back to the office, I got to meet two of our neighbours whose homes were completely destroyed by the burst pipes in our building this weekend.  I got to get a tour of the damage and the story as to what happened.

Apparently, we were not the only people who had called to report that the pipes had frozen (we had called on Saturday to let them know that the pipes were likely frozen and that we knew that because the washing machines had frozen – they didn’t respond to us telling them that the pipes were frozen until Monday – after the apartments were destroyed.)  One of the guys in a destroyed apartment had called to tell them that water was beginning to leak but no maintenance was deployed – likely because the call came through during the Cowboys game and no one was going to go fix a leak during a Cowboys game in Irving.  So there was clear negligence with having had a full day’s warning and not even investigating in the least and then having actual water leaking and ignoring the emergency!

The apartments in that part of the building had to be condemned by the city of Irving because the apartment building was attempting to force the residents to remain and live in the destroyed apartments (ceilings gone, walls destroyed, no carpeting, no electric, floors under water, no furniture, etc., etc.  The residents were told that the apartment takes no responsibility for what is in the apartments and told them to call their own insurance companies!  We have to call our own now to let them know that there is fraud underway at our complex.

The apartment is refusing to provide any housing whatsoever.  They continue to advertise for new people to move in but claim that there are no apartments for the people whose apartments have been destroyed and even told them that just because they were condemned did not mean that they could get out of their leases and that the apartment was under no obligation to provide housing to its lessees!

The apartment company did offer to let people out of their leases if, and only if, they were out immediately (where are they going to go?) and if they signed a non-disclosure agreement!  And the apartment management is not accepting calls from the displaced residents and are acting like they are not at fault, that this was not complete negligence and that they are not actively and willingly engaged in illegal activity now!  So we are turning everyone away from Tuscan Villas now and have informed my office, which is the closed business to the apartments, to warn everyone off from staying there.

So we are incredibly thankful that we only signed a six month lease and that there is nothing in our apartment.  We will certainly be leaving at the end of six months.  We miss New York a bit now where the state attorney general would have already responded to a situation like this.

Back to work for another busy day.  There is so much to be done. I am going to burn out soon.

Dominica was really stressed today when I got home.  Liesl and Oreo have really been wearing her out.  Not having furniture, a television or anything at all is not helping the situation.

Liesl kept us up really late tonight.  We are getting exhausted trying to keep up with her schedule and me going to work at New York hours.  It is a really tough combination.

Dominica had to spend a lot of the evening in our bedroom with Liesl while I worked in the living room on my homework for RIT.  I have a lot of work that is due and I need to get it done.

Once Liesl finally fell asleep and my work for today was done Dominica ran out to go to the grocery store as there is no other time to really do it.

It was around one in the morning by the time that we finally managed to get off to sleep.

Leave a comment