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County, renters at odds over house full of sewage
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer ST. PETERSBURG -- Without realizing it, Seth Meinders had gotten a whiff of trouble even before opening his front door. As he entered, he was greeted by a thick, swirling mass of black sewage that coated his living room, kitchen and bathroom floors. That evening, Feb. 17, recalled Meinders, who lives with his girlfriend, Susan "Sam" McPartland, the Pinellas County Utilities Department had responded for the second time in several days to neighbors' complaints about toilets that were on the verge of overflowing or actually doing so. About 6 p.m., when he arrived home, a county truck was working on a nearby sewer line. The neighborhood stunk, Meinders said. But worse was awaiting him in the boxy, low-lying house he and Ms. McPartland rent at 775 Brookwood Drive S, on the banks of Bear Creek. "When I opened the front door, you could see it was just a thick, black ooze. It wasn't even water. It was just a lumpy, black ooze," said Meinders, who rushed to alert the county workers. "I got the two guys who were running the equipment and I said, "I don't know what you're doing, but whatever you think you're doing is not working. You're pumping it into my living room.' " One of the workers "told his partner to shut everything off," Meinders said. "He told me they pulled out basketball-size roots and rags out of that line. He got right on the phone and he said that he was going to call the risk management department." That evening, Meinders, 48, said he spoke to one of the county's claims adjusters, who told him that the county was responsible for the damage and that it would send insurance restoration specialists, Servpro of Largo/Northeast St. Petersburg, to clean up the mess. "The dispatcher called me and she said they would be out in about 45 minutes to an hour. . . . I waited until about 9:30 and nobody called and nobody showed up," said Meinders, who decided to take matters into his own hands. "I had things that were in boxes that I didn't want to get contaminated. I went in there with a flat shovel and a garbage can. I shoveled out myself two garbage cans of basically feces from this house. I was getting it all over me. I didn't have any gloves," said the commercial painter, adding that he was wearing sandals at the time. The restoration company did not show up for two days, he said. But Domenick Murano, Pinellas County's director of risk management, tells a different story. "The cleaning contractor, as prearranged, went to this home Sunday night and he knew they were going to be there and he wasn't home," Murano said. "The following day, Monday, he wasn't home, so how could he say he waited two days and no one showed up? And on the third day, to accommodate him, they waited until after 5 for him to get home." Meinders countered, "I would have stayed longer (on Sunday night), but my feet were full of sewage." Further, he said, he could not afford to miss work. The county has offered to pay the couple's motel accommodations for about three weeks while their home is being cleaned and repaired, Murano said. However, Meinders and Ms. McPartland have decided to move into another house nearby. For one thing, the couple said, they could not take their three dogs and pot-bellied pig to a motel. As a result, they have had to board two of the dogs, give one up for adoption and farm out the pig, Blossom, to a willing friend. "The county has just turned our lives upside down and doesn't seem to care one way or another," Meinders said. "The county is basically telling us that since we don't have any renters' insurance, the only obligation that the county has to us is to put us up in a motel." "It has totally disrupted our lives," agreed Ms. McPartland, 40. "The fact remains that through the county's neglect of cleaning the sewer and their employees' incompetence in doing something wrongful . . . they pumped our house full of raw sewage. If Seth had not been there when he had, we probably would have lost everything, because it would have continued to flow into our home. Seth felt that it was imperative that he should begin to clean up, because it was beginning to flow into the room where we keep our photographs, our treasured items," said Ms. McPartland, a hair designer. "I'm not looking to make a big sum of money or anything. I think that they need to reimburse us for any money we had to put out for any of this. I cry every day. I can't sleep." The county's risk management director defends his department. "They have not been ignored. We promptly sent them to a motel," Murano said. "They have some personal belongings that they claimed have been damaged and as soon as we receive their inventory, we'll take a look at it and that will be the next step in the adjustment of the claim. They know we are waiting for it. And the reason we don't have their inventory is they lost the papers we gave them for that." The completed documents disappeared from their kitchen counter, Ms. McPartland said. "We don't want to go back out and count that stuff," she said, referring to the half dozen or so black garbage bags filled with clothes, blankets, shoes and other sewage-soaked items lined up on the back porch. Ms. McPartland said the county has given them the runaround. "Let's just hope that Seth doesn't get ill, because they can't pay for that. They can't," she said sobbing. "I am just asking for them to be fair."
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From the Times South Pinellas desks |
