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A young Queensland family is asking their council to step up and help them after street drain workers caused their home to flood with sewage.
Sumit and Sucheta Kapoor, both hospital nursing workers, moved into their Toowoomba home with their two primary school-aged children in 2018.
But in November last year, the whole family had to evacuate after the council hired tradesmen to clear a blocked drain during a severe storm, causing their home to become soaked in ankle-deep contaminated water.
“My son just screamed and you could see something, some kind of black water coming very slowly out of the doors,” Ms Kapoor said. A current issue.
Mr and Mrs Kapoor begged Toowoomba City Council to help them financially but were told they could not be held responsible for the mishap.
Sumit and Sucheta Kapoor (pictured) are calling on Toowoomba City Council to step up and help them after their home flooded due to council work.
They left briefly in November 2023 and returned to find the floor covered in sewage.
The Kapoor family went out and returned home to find that sewage had seeped through the bathroom shower drain and spread throughout the house.
The couple spoke to the crew working across the street and asked them to look inside their house to see the damage, but they refused, saying they were not allowed into people’s homes.
“I really begged them, ‘Please come in and see what they’ve done,'” Kapoor said.
‘Everything was damaged in our room, in my son’s room, everything.
‘And the smell… after an hour, you couldn’t stand it.’
The couple said traders told them it was not unusual for drainage works to cause problems, however when a council supervisor turned up later that day to inspect the damage they were shocked.
“We walked in and the guy, the council guy, just shook his head,” Sumit said.
“He said, ‘Oh, this is really sad,’ and… he apologized for what happened.”
He accessed a different sewer on his property and cleaned that drain, but the damage to his house was already done.
Dirty water had seeped through the bathroom shower drain and covered the floor throughout the property.
Many of their belongings were ruined and they had to find temporary accommodation, moving five times in four months.
They said the frequent moves had been costly and had forced them to use up all their annual leave during all the packing and unpacking.
Fortunately, the family was insured, so the construction work to remove the floor and rebuild it is covered, although the family had to pay a large deductible.
They said Toowoomba Council provided funding for a few nights’ stay in a hotel, but has since refused to provide them with financial support.
“We are under a lot of financial pressure… We are struggling with everything.” Mrs. Kapoor said.
They recently wrote to the council asking for help, but said the council responded by washing its hands of the situation.
The Council said in its response that since the events that caused the flooding were unforeseeable, it could not be held responsible.
The council told the ACA that “as the matter has not yet been resolved, it would be inappropriate to comment.”
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Toowoomba Council for comment.