chalet05 wrote:
My floors are all dry and I can now get on with it. My neighbors are moving out with nowhere to go but a hotel at this point. Apartment company gave them 2 nights hotel and stretched it to 3. How generous. I don't understand how the company isn't paying for all this instead of neighbors' insurance. I am just so disgusted! This morning I was cleaning under the kitchen stove before putting the drawer back in. Would you believe there was a bottle cap stuck between the wall and the floor?!? It's not even sealed! I'm think of calling a new complex and asking who built it. Sure wouldn't move in if they used the same one as here.
Offering a hotel stay may be a ploy from the apartment company to stave off a large claim from the tenants who were living in the damaged unit/s and were forced to move because of the damage. Due to the negligence of the apartment managers in not keeping the apartment heated enough so the pipes wouldn't burst. Maybe the apartment company made some kind of offer (cash or otherwise - to the tenants - for example, the hotel stay), with the stipulation that no further claim could be made against the apartment company once the tenants accepted the offer.
If the tenants in the damaged apartment/s
had some kind of renter's insurance in order to be covered for something like this, if they accepted the apartment company's offer
first (instead of working with their renter's insurance carrier first - that is, if they even had renters insurance) they may be now be out of luck in filing any future claim if they already accepted the apartment company offer.
Act in haste, repent at leisure kind of thing.
Didn't you say there were vacant units in your building? One wonders why the apartment company didn't offer them one of the vacant units.
And. . . Not my business, of course, but since you also got water in your unit I would give very serious thought to moving. It is really difficult, if not impossible, to get all of the moisture out of walls that have been exposed to water without opening them. In flood situations, walls affected by water damage are generally opened (sheet rock is removed), the interior space (what was behind the sheet rock) is totally allowed to dry, then the sheet rock is replaced.
If your floors were wet (I think that you said the flooded units were above you, so water may have got to you by coming down through the walls), it is possible that there is also lingering moisture in your sub-floor if the floor was not opened.
When warm weather comes - or even just the ambient heat from inside your unit - mold can begin to grow inside any walls or floors that are not opened.
Of course, it is a lot easier to just get some heavy-duty fans and let them blow a bit and call it "done", than it is to do semi-major re-construction.
Anne