Burst pipe displaces families in Naples

NAPLES, Fla. – A burst pipe caused severe water damage at an apartment complex Saturday morning. Now dozens of people are trying to find a place to stay until the problem is addressed.

“I really don’t know what to do. I’m lost for words,” said Innocine Milfort. She is one of more than a dozen tenants who were flooded out of their apartments.

Management at the Windsong Club Apartments says a pipe burst, but tenants say they noticed something wrong earlier in the week when some of them noticed small leaks in their bathrooms.

WINK News asked management why the problem wasn’t addressed then, and they say they were never notified of the problem. Tenants say that’s not true.

“I first contact the building manager on Thursday morning at 9 o’clock,” said one tenant. She goes on to say she tried multiple times to reach management earlier in the week.

Now her entire unit is flooded and she doesn’t know where she will stay until it’s repaired.

“I don’t have no place to live,” she said. “It seems like the hole house is a mess.”

Walt Timoney lives in a unit upstairs. While he says his water damage is minimal, he’s not taking any chances with mold now being a concern.

“I’m not staying here tonight, because I don’t know if it’s safe or not,” said Timoney. “It might be safe, but I’m not taking a chance.”

“We’re working on it,” said a representative of the apartment. “You see my maintenance crew here, they’re doing what any other normal apartment complex would do. Extracting the water and we’re working on it.”

So while crews clean the units and management tries to figure out how this all happened, these families are now given the task to find a place to sleep, until they can go back to dry and safe home.

“I have four kids here with me from the age of 8 on up, I really don’t know,” said Milfort.