Killeen resident on day three of busted pipes, flooded apartment receives little help from apartment complex

KILLEEN, Texas (KWTX) - Leaving her faucet running and opening her sink cabinet drawers didn’t stop the arctic blast of last week from causing pipes in Lori Keith’s Stonehill Apartment Complex to burst Friday.

Those busted pipes have left her carpet completely soaked.

“I got home on Friday night about 11:30,” Lori Keith, a Killeen resident, told KWTX. “I called the emergency maintenance number and they said the upstairs pipes had busted and they turned the water off and would be working on it on Saturday.”

But when Saturday rolled around, maintenance didn’t show up, despite Keith informing her leasing office of the situation, too.

Three days later and her carpet remains the same.

“I didn’t get a response,” Keith said. “Later in the afternoon, there was a mass text to all the residents saying they turned off the water and were working on the repairs. And nobody has been to my apartment at all this entire time, so I still don’t have water and my apartment is still flooded.”

Keith says that through an exchange of emails, the leasing office’s solution in the meantime has been to make the bathrooms of just two vacant apartments available for those tenants without water to use.

“But there’s like 346 apartments in our complex and they have two bathrooms essentially,” Keith told KWTX. “So whenever I went, there was a line.”

Keith also said that the management office recommended contacting her renter’s insurance company, USSA, to help get her out of the mildewy conditions and into a hotel.

But like the maintenance team, she’s received no response, despite filing a claim online.

“Saturday evening I went ahead and filed my claim online, and because yesterday was Christmas I kind of just left it at that,” Keith said. “But then first thing this morning, I’ve been trying to call all morning long but nobody’s been answering. I don’t think anyone’s at work.”

When we reached out to Stonehill Apartments to comment, we didn’t receive a response.

USSA hasn’t responded for comment, either.

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