BrianBoineau
New Member
- Jurisdiction
- South Carolina
I am writing to see what if anything could be done as far as civil action against a motel proprietor and/or his insurance company. I will expain the situation while trying to be as brief as possible. My wife and I were tenants at the Ridgeway Motel for a little less than 2 years. We paid $230.00 per week. We have 3 small pets which is why we chose this motel in particular. Well, in the early morning hours of Tuesday 4/25/17. My wife and I heard a loud bang. My wife thought it sounded like gun fire, and to me it sounded more like a gas type explosion. Almost as soon as I could look out the window our room was already beginning to cloud up with smoke, and I could smell what seemed like ammonia. Just then someone banged on our door and screamed "fire"! I opened the door and looked to the left, and saw a fully involved, raging fire coming from one of the rooms just a few doors down. My wife and I went into survival mode and began trying to gather the pets, and put them in a cage. We were almost not able to get one of them because by this time the room had been almost entirely overcome with smoke, and the chemical odor was too strong to breathe. We evacuated ourselves to the grassy area just in front of the property, while firefighters tried to fight the blaze. The fire although it seemed was contained to one room, it spread rapidly. I noticed several mini explosions happening before, and while firefighters were there. I am the only one who was recording the event on my cell phone, and I still have it saved. We were left standing in a very cold night with no shoes, jackets, and a slight rain coming down on us. We didnt see the motel owner "Mike", which lives on property and was there during the whole event. He never came to check on any of the guests, and to this day hasn't even attempted to reach out to us. We were told by Fairfield County fire officials, Fairfield County Sheriffs Dept., and Fairfield Electric Co. that this was being deemed a crime scene, and we could not enter our room to gather our belongings. I was allowed only once upon returning several hours later to enter the room with the escort of 2 firefighters in an attempt to find my Class A CDL to provide information to the American Red Cross who to this day were the only people concerned of our well being. The odor was so strong in the room that I had to get out without locating it. I am still without Identification currently. We called the motel owner to ask how we were to go about getting our belongings, which is all of our worldly possessions seeing as we were living there, and he was extremely rude, and told us that we would be tresspassing if we attempted to get in the room, and that we would just have to wait until he said it was OK to come get them. We then asked for the name of his insurance company and he got really mad, and hung up on us. It will have been a week ago tomorrow morning, and we still have nothing, heard nothing, and are becoming more desperate and depressed. I suffer from CPTSD, and I have been having a real rough time dealing with this, my wife suffers from a depressive disorder as well, and it's hard on us. We have no vehicle, and our relatives are either deceased or live in another state, so we have no one to turn to for help. We would be so appreciative if there was anyway you may be able to help us. I would be happy to speak with you directly. . Thank you.
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