Sacramento Residents Sift Through Soggy Storage Units Weeks After Record Rain: 'Just Destroyed'

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — It's been nearly three weeks since Sacramento's record-breaking rainstorm and some are still picking up the pieces.

Jill Perlman has spent days sifting through soggy boxes struggling to salvage what she could.

"So everything I own is just destroyed," Perlman said of her belongings at Life Storage. "You know it's hard because every day it's sort of been one thing I'm happy to see and then two or three things I'm really lamenting."

Perlman struggled to find the words as she sat among all her belongings that are now wet, moldy and ruined.

Sacramento's record rain at the end of October was enough to flood multiple units at Life Storage when a sum pump stopped during a power outage.  Firefighters had to rescue people in the area by boat.

Perlman has been dealing with the aftermath ever since.

"A long hard week of ten-hour days trying to clean up and salvage what you can, and it isn't just me. It's everybody here who lost," said Perlman.

Dominick Palumbo poured roughly $20,000 into his show car that's now nothing but parts. He says what makes matters worse is that no one notified him about the flood until it was too late to salvage anything because it had sat in contaminated water for days.

"When I pulled it out, everything was just soaked, just tubs of water," said Palumbo. "They should compensate for what we have left, like the vehicle and stuff.  There's no way they can replace all the memories."

"I am so frustrated because I feel like there could've been something that could've been done if we had been notified," said Eloise Palumbo.

Perlman says she was notified but she wants to know if the city could've prevented the sum pump issues in the first place.

"If that's the case, then shame on them for not fixing that," said Perlman.

CBS13 reached out to Life Storage late Friday but hadn't heard back as the writing of this story.  The city says it's looking into concerns about the sum pump.