Woman's duplex badly damaged after neighbours abandon their side of building
Peggy MacDonald | CBC News | Posted: February 9, 2018 12:17 AM | Last Updated: February 9, 2018
Neighbours turned off furnace but didn’t shut off water before walking away in December
Kimmy Losier is still tearful when she thinks about what she saw when she walked in the door of her two-storey duplex in Glace Bay, N.S., one day last month.
"When I came home from work on the 24th of January, I walked in here and I saw water just pouring down my walls. There was water coming in through the ceiling. My hallway floor was flooded," Losier recounted.
"When I realized it wasn't coming from my home, I walked outside. You could actually hear what sounded like a waterfall coming from the neighbour's house."
Her neighbours had abandoned the other side of the house just after Christmas, turning off the furnace without shutting off the water, Losier said. A low temperature of –19 C overnight on Jan. 23 is believed to have caused the pipes to freeze and burst.
"My friends have done everything to … tear down everything, gut the place, replace everything that's been damaged. All the walls, the ceilings, the floors. I am so lucky that I have them because there's no way I could do this on my own."
Losier, who moved to Glace Bay from Ontario 12 years ago to build a new life, says her original through-the-wall neighbours were two elderly brothers with whom she had a "great relationship."
One brother, then the other, passed away and members of their extended family moved in. Losier says they did no regular maintenance or upkeep. Eventually, they walked away, but not before selling their oil tank, leaving their half of the house unheated.
Friends step in
Still reeling from the destruction in her home, Losier, a single mother, took her son to his floor hockey game, where a friend noticed she didn't seem herself.
"She was a complete mess," said Anita Ransome, "and so she kind of broke down in the gym that day. I felt so terrible."
Ransome spoke to her handyman husband about Losier's situation and he decided to help out.
Ransome said her husband and his friends have done what they can to keep Losier's home livable. But the damage to the interior is not the end of it.
Money she doesn't have
In order for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) to execute a demolition order on the abandoned side of the house, Losier will need to spend thousands to turn the wall separating the two units into an exterior wall.
"I've been very lucky," she said. "I've always been employed. I've always been able to make do, but this kind of damage, it's not something you budget for. It's not something you ever expect is going to happen to you."
A friend in Alberta has set up a GoFundMe campaign, which by mid-afternoon Thursday had raised $3,665. Losier's total costs, between repairing the flood damage and fortifying the dividing wall, could reach $30,000.
On her own
Paul Burt, the manager of building, planning and licensing laws for the municipality, is sympathetic but says Losier is responsible for repairs to her own home.
"All we could do is secure the property so that critters, rodents, and other people don't enter it," he said. "It is a tough situation for her and we do feel really bad for her but you know, CBRM cannot be in a position where we're going in and making emergency repairs to private individuals' homes.
"We really can't go in and set precedent, and go in and help her because there's a whole long line of people behind her that need the same kind of help."
Burt said the municipality will try to track down the current legal owner of the property, although its ownership was never transferred from the names of the two now-dead brothers.
He said when Losier can afford to beef up the partition wall, the municipality will move in quickly to tear down the empty part of the building.
Losier admits she sometimes wishes she could abandon her home and its troubles, the way her neighbours did. But she can't.
"I purchased this home. I had my son in this home. This is our neighbourhood. Those are my neighbours out there. Those are the ones that have been by me," she said.
"My son's got all of his friends in this area; he goes to school in this area. This is our home. This is everything to us."