Current Conditions
55°F - P/SUNNY
(184) (8) (2)
No hot water.
Saturday and Sunday, Donovan said, there was still no hot water in her apartment building at The Crossings at Mill Creek, off Swarr Run Road near Park City Center.
By Monday morning, Donovan was getting really, really tired of cold showers.
"I'm frustrated," she said. "How would you like it if that happened to you? You would want it fixed right away.
"We have hot water at work and it's one of those things you take for granted. You don't realize what it's like to go without it till it's gone."
Monday afternoon, after almost four days, Donovan and her fellow residents in the 20 apartments in Building A finally were able to take hot showers, wash their dishes and wash clothes with hot water.
"If we could have fixed it faster, we would have," said Lisa Rice, senior property manager for Morgan Properties, which owns and manages The Crossings and other apartment communities in Pennsylvania and nine other states.
Morgan immediately hired a contractor to fix the water heater, but the repair service could not find the needed part, Rice said. Then the weekend hit, which meant many parts distributors were closed.
The contractor finally located the part in Connecticut, Rice said. The decision was made Monday morning to have the part sent by a delivery service, which was expected to get it here by this morning.
But then the contractor was able to find smaller parts to fix the problem, rather than an entire assembly that had been expected from Connecticut, Rice said.
In the meantime, residents grew increasingly upset. One resident called East Hempfield Township to register a complaint. The township contacted the property manager, and was satisfied the problem was being addressed by that point, said building inspector Patrick Barker.
Rice disputed several residents' contention that no hot water was available for almost four days. She said hot water was circulating in the building, and residents were instructed to let the water run for a few minutes and it would eventually get hot.
Donovan said she tried that and it did not work.
Joshua Lefever said he tried running the water for up to an hour but it never got hot. He and his wife, Emily, resorted to boiling water to wash bottles for their 6-month-old son, William, and to do their other dishes.
E-mail: cstauffer@lnpnews.com
