HOUSTON – Residents living in one Southwest Houston apartment complex had to deal with raw sewage backup for over 20 hours and they say the city is to blame for repair delays.
Yi Yang is the property manager at the Sunblossom Garden Apartments on Ranchester Drive in southwest Houston, and she says she will do anything for the families that live at the complex.
She shared video with KPRC 2 of water gushing from a manhole cover outside of the complex Wednesday afternoon.
“This happened yesterday around 4:30 p.m. We found out the whole property had a sewer line backup,” she said.
Yang said the problem got so bad, that raw sewage started seeping up around the property and into people’s homes.
“How are people supposed to live in these kinds of situations,” Yang said.
Yang called the city of Houston and reported the problem. She said a worker told her the issue would be resolved in 24-48 hours, but Yang didn’t take no for answer.
“After two hours, nobody showed up and we kept following up. The city said unfortunately the people (workers) went home already they can’t come out until the morning,” Yang said.
Around noon on Thursday, Yang said the city fixed the issue in less than five minutes. Our cameras spotted city workers in the area.
But for over 20 hours, residents like Andres Gafia Flores who has a family couldn’t use the toilet or take a shower.
“We couldn’t use this one last night we couldn’t use it. There was poop and dirty water coming out of the toilet and the shower,” Flores said.
Yang said the smelly situation was unacceptable and the City of Houston should have treated the problem like an emergency.
“They need to send someone even after work okay it’s their job. We understand we need to give city time but not for 20 hours,” she said.
Yang said she also paid a plumbing company $1,500 to fix the issue, but they couldn’t make the repairs because the water lines were owned by the City of Houston.
We asked the city of Houston why it took so long for workers to fix the problem.
A spokesperson says Houston is a large city with thousands of pipelines that stretches for several miles. Once a case number was created for the complex, workers added it to the list and fixed it.