It’s getting down right biblical at Plaza Towers.
Only five hours after James Penn was allowed back into his apartment nine days after being evacuated because of a fire inthe building, he was forced back out by firefighters when a water pipe burst near his ninth-floor apartment Wednesday night.
“This is like some Bible stuff,” Penn said Thursday. “Fires, some floods. ... What’s next? Locusts?”
On June 11, Penn was one of about 200 residents chased from the 132-unit high-rise apartment building by a second-floor fire. One person died from the fire injuries, and five others were injured. Smoke damage kept residents from their apartments until Wednesday.
But that night’s rupturedpipe seemed to be something more out of the Book of Job than Exodus, adding another trial for residents who have been tried before.
James Jamison, like Penn, returned to his ninth-floor apartment late Wednesday afternoon. Shortly before 10 p.m. Jamison heard a “whooshing” sound. At first, he thought it was gas. But he couldn’t smell anything.
When he inspected his kitchen, scalding hot water was shooting out of a “garden hose”-size hole in the wall and flooding his kitchen floor.
The water flooded most of the ninth floor, and Little Rock Fire Department spokesman Capt. Randy Hickmon said fire crews evacuated the top three floors for several hours while electric and maintenance crews made sure it was safe to return.
Hickmon said Wednesday night’s pipe burst had nothing to do with last week’s fire.
“It’s just bad luck,” Hickmon said. “It’s an unfortunate ... terrible thing, those poor people get misplaced with that leak, just awful.”
Penn and his wife heard commotion outside their apartment, and as soon as he opened the door, the hot water started seeping inside.
“My feet was burning,” Penn said. “When it came ... it came like a tsunami, a hot tsunami.”
Penn was able to minimize the damage by building a knee-high dam out of towels and other fabric to battle back the 3-inch surge.
After that, crews worked out of his room to pump water out of the hall and other apartments.
“It was just a disaster,” Penn said.
Hickmon said he didn’t know the total property damage, and Henry Management, which runs the Plaza Towers property, said they would not comment on the flood or the fire.
Jamison said building management hasn’t said much to him, either. Officials haven’t even helped him find a place to stay.
Once the water started filling his apartment Wednesday night, he started packing up again - this time in hot water several inches high - and went toa friend’s house.
“I told [maintenance] to lock up when they were done [working on the leak],” Jamison said.
He said he doesn’t have renter’s insurance anddoesn’t know just how much of his property was damaged. He said the leak was preventable and he holds the complex responsible for his lost property.
Jamison said he noticed a problem as soon as he was let back into his apartment Wednesday afternoon and found his kitchen floor and parts of his carpet wet, something he thought strange, since firefighters had put out the fire seven floors below his.
Jamison said the building maintenance crew didn’t know what was causing the leak, and before leaving for the day at 5 p.m., the crew gave him a fan to dry out his apartment.
“Instead of staying there and pursuing [the leak], they left and said, ‘Keep an eye on it,’” Jamison said. “They’re minimizing stuff ... what happened. We can’t get any help.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 06/22/2012