How sewage floods at home turned into nightmares for Raleigh families

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From the pictures, it looks like someone scattered potting soil all over Katherine Bryant and Paul Sullivan’s home and sprayed water over it.

But the reality is sewage overflowed from the drains in their home, saturating their carpet, destroying their wood floors and clogging their HVAC system.

“In those original pictures you saw that black river, this is exactly where it was,” said Bryant as she pointed out her now restored master bedroom and bathroom.

“I was shocked, completely shocked,” Sullivan said about his reaction when the backup happened back in April 2023.

Both he and Bryant were at work at the time. Bryant says her mother was at the home and called her.

“The city’s doing some work and there’s some black water coming up in your bathroom,” Bryant recalled her mother telling her.

Sullivan raced home and says he got there just before the contractor left. “He looked at me and just said ‘call the number on the side of the truck’ and drove away,” Sullivan recalled.

The couple says they contacted the City of Raleigh and started the process for a damage claim.

The total cost to repair the damage, replace lost belongings and for a place to stay while repairs were being made totaled more than $160,000.

The city uses an independent third-party administrator, CorVel Corporation, to handle these types of claims and payments aren’t made until the claim is complete.

That meant Bryant and Sullivan had to cover about $68,000 out of their own pocket up front.

“It was told to us over and over again, no partial review, nothing in the interim. So, we had to wait till everything was done workwise to submit a claim,” Bryant told us about the process with the city.

The couple also said the company that restored their house threatened to put a lien on the home because they hadn’t been paid by the city or their administrator for the $75,000 worth of work they’d done.

And in the middle of this whole process, Bryant gave birth to the couple’s second child.

“Spent a lot of my maternity leave, which breaks my heart a bit, pulling together this very detailed claim,” Bryant said.

Bryant and Sullivan aren’t the only one’s who have dealt with this. In 2019, 5 On Your Side reported a similar sewer backup happened in Laurie Snyder’s home.

The city recommended both Snyder and Bryant/Sullivan get a backwater valve installed to prevent these events, known as blowback events, from happening again.

That valve has a door, so if water starts flowing the wrong way from the sewer to a home, the door shuts and stops sewage from flowing into the home.

Elizabeth Reed also lives in Raleigh in the North Hills area and says she’s had nine sewer backups of varying degrees since 2007.

“This house never ever flooded once until they started upgrading the lines in the front,” Reed said.

After the first backup events, the city also told her to install a backwater valve. She said it worked, but also caused a new problem.

“The problem is that when the city flushes these lines, it blocks up my main sewer line and it closes that flap, which is great because the water isn’t getting in. But, when I don’t know that’s happening, any waste I have in my house from washing clothes, to showering, to flushing the toilet, backs up into my house. It causes another flood, but this time from inside,” Reed explained.

She said that was the assessment explained to her by a plumber.

But when she filed a claim with the City of Raleigh, the third-party administrators said they didn’t find evidence that’s what happened and denied her claim.

“This has cost me $450,000 over the years,” Reed estimated. “It’s terrible, it’s unbelievable, it’s traumatic, I swear I have PTSD from this because you don’t know when lightning is going to strike again.”

Bryant and Sullivan’s claim was eventually approved and closed, but it took a year before that happened and they could recoup the $68,000 they spent on hotels, replacements and other costs.

“We’ve managed to withstand this and we’re really fortunate in a lot of ways, but I think there are some folks who this would be worse for them and I think the city needs to be mindful of that,” Bryant said.

In emails about this situation with a City of Raleigh spokesperson, they said in part “We understand this is a difficult situation for the family… The city has an independent third-party administrator that collects information and evaluates claims to be sure that they are handled in a professional, independent matter and consistent with law… The standard practice of professional insurance adjusters is to settle claims once all damages have been identified and repaired.”

The city did make a $76,169.18 payment to the restoration company that Bryant and Sullivan said were threatening a lien on their home. That payment came before the claim was approved and closed, which was both a relief and frustrating for Bryant.

“Great because the lien wasn’t put on our house and incredibly frustrating because this indicates to me that this rule hasn’t been administered appropriately the entire time,” she said. “They could have been making incremental payments to us or to the restoration company.”

In all three of these sewer blowback cases, the homes were below the grade of the road or downstream from the main sewer line itself.

That’s one key point in identifying whether your home could be at risk for a backup event.

Newer homes were likely built with a backwater valve, it’s older homes that may not have it.

You can talk with a plumber about your options to install one.

In Reed’s case, the City of Raleigh is now recommending she install a lift station to pump water from her home, up stream, to the sewer main. However, Reed says that would cost her $12,000 and she isn’t able to do that.

You can also ask your municipality if there’s a record of backflow events in that area, that will also give you an idea of your potential risk.