Water pipe broke w/in toilet tank, flooded apartment

[snickers8264]

At 1:00am, Christmas Morning, I heard a loud crash-bang come from my spare bathroom. When I went in there, the porcelain top of the tank had been knocked off by the pressure of the water shooting out of the tank. The piping that fills the tank with water had shot the black plastic water controller thing up, pushed off the tank lid and was shooting straight up to my ceiling. When I went to shut off the water valve, I noticed there was no handle to shut off the water. I rummaged through my stuff, found some pliers and tried to turn the little, ribbed piece of metal (which I am assuming should have contained a handle) in hopes of turning off the water. No luck! So, as I was tring to turn another bolt, the whole piece exploded out of the wall. I had water shooting straight out of the wall at high intensity.

At the same time I am doing this, I was calling our emergency maintenance line for the apartment complex...in order to "leave a message". I also called a friend to see if he could come help me. As I was waiting for someone to show up, I ran around the outside of the building in hopes of finding some way to turn off the water for the building. Again, no luck. By the time my friend arrived, my entire apartment was filled with an inch of water. My friend went out to see if he could shut off the water. He ended up breaking into a little building that had the shut off valves for the building...he shut them all off. After the water ran in my place for 20-30 minutes, we waited another 20 minutes for a maintenance person to show up.

The maintenance guy didn't say much but was able to work on fixing the toilet so he could turn the water on for the rest of the building, sucking up some of the water from the carpet, and setting up two dehumidifiers to help dry the rest of the carpet. As he squish-squached his way out of my apartment, he told me that the office would be open on Tuesday (two days later) and I could talk to the manager about everything then.

As I am writing this, it is Monday night and my carpets are still damp throughout my place even after I tried sucking up more water with a wet-vac. I have water damaged furniture, antiques, books, clothes/shoes, etc. And, I am depressed that my Christmas is ruined by all of this and now I have to spend time cleaning up everything.

My question...

1) What legal rights do I have?
2) Does not having any way of turning off the water on my toilet increase my chances of getting compensated for damages, etc?
3) What should I expect from my landlord?

Any advice is helpful.

Thank you!!!

 

[Duranie]

Do you have renters insurance? That should cover any personal belongings that were damaged.

Your landlord should, at the very least, get ServiceMaster out to clean the carpets and the furniture.

If you don't have renters insurance, not sure how much claim you have on personal belongings that were ruined, since you would have to prove the landlord negligent to get any claim. Since the valve on the toilet appeared to be defective and not let you turn the water off, you might have a claim, but this is why you should have renters insurance.

I would be talking to the manager and ask for them to have a carpet cleaner/Servicemaster come out and dry the carpets asap. You will have to also talk to them about personal items that were damaged if you do not have renters coverage.

 

[snickers8264]

Duranie:

Thank you for your response.

I do have renter's insurance and am currently working on getting a claim filed. After reading your response, I am a little more confident that things are going the way they are supposed to. My landlord said they would at least clean my carpets after the carpets dry. I am hoping they plan to move my furniture around, so they can clean all parts of my carpet. Better yet, I hope to get new carpet and padding since mold and mildew is a huge problem in my area.

Thank you again for your response!!