Heavy rain damages apartments
"My first sense was that the cat was going crazy, and it was just pouring outside," Murray said in a phone interview Wednesday. "So I got my husband up and we got out."
She said that she and her husband went with other residents to a community room within the former school building, where the apartments are geared toward residents 55 and older and include 80 units of recognized affordable housing.
"It was apparent there was no hazard to the entire building," Smith said, "but at the start, we didn't know exactly where the leak was or where the water was coming from."
Moments later -- sometime approaching
Noyes explained that there are decks on the fifth floor of the building, but that they are built within the exterior frame of the building, which sits across the street from Gloucester's
"Apparently, what happened is that the drains themselves got covered over with mud. Once the drains got clogged, the water began to build up on the decks," Noyes said Wednesday, adding the water was as much as 8 inches deep.
As the water rose, it topped a retention barrier and made its way into the interior walls of the building, Noyes said. And that brought ceilings crashing down below.
Noyes said the damage primarily affected four units on the fourth floor. Murray noted that two units on the third floor -- below her and her husband's apartment -- were affected as well.
The Gloucester Development Team is covering the cost of housing the residents at the
Noyes said the repair plans call for installing wider drains in addition to replacing furniture, painting and taking other improvement steps. He said cleaning work began over the weekend, but he estimated that it could be another two weeks before residents are able to return to their homes.
He said that, while the development team had dealt with a number of repair issues in the past, "this caught us by surprise."
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