A Westbrook family is looking for some relief after sewage backed up into their home earlier this month for the second time since they bought it seven years ago.

Dana and Cheryle Trufant and their three children have taken up residence at the Howard Johnson since sewage backed up into their home on Longfellow Drive in the early morning hours of July 8. The sewage backed up into their finished basement, where their three children sleep.

It was the second time sewage had come into the home through a drainage pipe in their basement floor. The first time was in 1998 – nine months after they bought the house.

“I don’t want to go through this again,” said Cheryle Trufant. “I want to know what the city plans to do to prevent this from happening again.”

Public Services Deputy Director John Emerson said sewage backed up into the home in 1998 because a construction crew doing work on the street accidentally dropped some debris into a manhole, clogging the sewer line. Although nothing had been dropped into the sewer before the most recent backup, he said it was also most likely caused by debris clogging the line. In both instances, the city filed a claim with its insurance company.

“In terms of the city’s handling of it, I think (the most recent occurrence) is just a question of happenstance, not a question of poor maintenance,” said Emerson.

However, Cheryle Trufant believes sewage may have been backing up into the house for years. She said a neighbor told her it happened to previous owners of the home.

Trufant said she believes the previous homeowners hid the problem when they sold the home. She said the drain in the basement where sewage has been coming into their home was covered with flooring when they purchased the house.

“When we came to the house, they had scented candles in every room,” said Trufant. “We didn’t know why. Now we know.”

Emerson said he didn’t know of another backup other than the one in 1998. He said the Trufants could benefit from a backflow protector – a device designed to prevent sewage backups and required for basement drainage pipes under some municipal ordinances.

“At this point in time, we don’t see it as a systemic problem,” said Emerson.

Owning the home has been a nightmare at times for the Trufants. After the first sewage backup, Cheryle Trufant said she moved the furniture from the basement outside the house to cleanup and keep the furniture from smelling. She said it proceeded to rain for a week. The furniture was ruined and had to be replaced.

Trufant said the smell never completely went away after the 1998 backup, even though they had the home professionally cleaned. She said she could smell it each time she came home after the house had been closed and empty for a while.

After the most recent backup, Trufant said the family stayed in the home for a week because the city’s insurance company hadn’t told them whether it would cover any of the damage. She said they finally decided to get out and go to a hotel when her 21-year-old son, Nick, who has asthma, started wheezing at night.

“It was disgusting,” said Trufant. “We didn’t know what to do because we knew what hassles we went through the first time, and the city said there was nothing they could do.”

Deputy Finance Director Janet Atkinson said she wasn’t sure why it took a week for the insurance company to process the claim. She said she filed the claim the same day as the backup but lacked some necessary paperwork from the city sewer inspector, who was on vacation.

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Atkinson. “All I know is when the incident happened, I was told to file the claim without any paperwork.”

Trufant said the family is now struggling to get the insurance company to pay all of their expenses. She said the insurance adjustor hasn’t said yet how much the company, the Maine Municipal Association Property and Casualty Pool, will cover.

The adjustor told them, according to Trufant, that the company might not even pay for their stay at a hotel, even though Howard Johnson has given them a discounted rate because of the circumstances. She said the adjustor was telling them to move back into the home last week, even though the basement, including two bedrooms, was torn up and being cleaned as late as last Friday.

“She said ‘I don’t want you to get stuck with a hotel bill,'” Trufant said of the insurance adjustor.

The cleaning company will soon be spraying the basement with chemicals to sanitize it. Trufant is worried inhaling them could be detrimental to her kids, especially her son with asthma.

“Would you put your kids back down there?” she asked.

“Any information we have on our members or their claims is confidential so I couldn’t comment,” said Joe Slocum, the supervisor of property and casualty claims for the Maine Municipal Association Property and Casualty Pool.

As the Trufants worry about how they will afford the cleanup, which will require replacing the basement floor and much of the woodwork, they don’t have a guarantee it won’t happen again.

“Could someone say, even if you put in a backflow preventor, that this couldn’t happen again? I don’t think they could say that because there’s always that happenstance,” said Emerson.

As Cheryle Trufant sat on her deck last week with her head bowed to her hands thinking of the trouble the home had brought her, she remembered something she had recently told the mortgage company. “I said ‘if you want to foreclose, go ahead. I don’t care. It’s not worth the hassle,'” she said.

Nick Trufant stands next to his mother, Cheryle, in front of their home, which flooded with sewage earlier this month.

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