SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A San Francisco man's home is contaminated after sewage floods his apartment, and it's not the first time he's faced this problem.
Armed with a squeegee, 77-year-old Jakow tried to remove black puddles of sewage from his San Francisco apartment on Tuesday evening. As Yakov dragged a bucket of the foul-smelling mud onto his patio, a maintenance worker explained that help wasn't on the way immediately and said, “We'll work on your unit tomorrow, sir.”
Yakov lives on Bay Street in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, in a 341-unit complex owned and managed by the John Stewart Company. On Monday evening, sewage began to overflow from his toilet.
At the same time, flooding also occurred at the Trader Joe's garage, which was located on the street level of the complex. The grocery store was closed Tuesday while workers cleaned up inside and plumbers parked outside.
However, this is not the first time that plumbing has been a problem in the complex. Cell phone video from Yakov's unit from 2016 shows the aftermath when his bathroom overflowed for the first time. Dehumidifiers and fans blow onto exposed walls and bare floors. It took more than a month to repair this damage.
When Yakov's apartment was flooded with sewage two years ago, his family had to spend more than $4,000 to replace all of his furniture. And now that it's happened again and his couch, rugs and chairs are covered in sewage, his family fears they'll lose thousands of dollars again.
“It is of course very expensive, but also very stressful,” said Yakov’s daughter Rimma, who looks after her father. Rimma says she has been trying to move her father to another apartment in the complex for years without success, due in large part to the flooding. “I don’t understand why it’s so hard to look at the blueprints and figure out which pipe goes where and how to fix it.”
Yakov is currently staying in a hotel paid for by the owners.
ABC7 spoke on the phone with John Stewart, the company's chairman, who said they would fix this issue and cover the cost of lost property.
For more stories, photos and videos about recent sewage spills, follow this link.
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