by Emily Wickersham

Created on: August 03, 2011   Last Updated: August 16, 2011

We're the last people who should have had a problem.  My husband and I don't take chances.  We'd each lived in a series of rental apartments when we were single, and we'd always carried renter's insurance.  It's hard to imagine what caused us to skip it this time.  Maybe it's because we weren't planning to rent for long-just until we sold our house in Florida.  I stayed behind, while my husband started a new job in Virginia.  I drove up to help him look for a small apartment where he could stay for a few months.

The basement apartment seemed perfect-inexpensive and in a decent neighborhood, with plenty of shopping nearby.  Best of all, the management offered us a short-term lease. We started moving our possessions to the new apartment to save time later. 

The apartment WAS perfect-until the rains came, that is.  Alexandria was inundated with record rainfall that autumn.  The sump pump that was supposed to keep water out of the apartment failed. We hadn't gotten around to setting up the bed yet, so the mattress was on the floor. My husband woke in the middle of the night to find our expensive mattress soaked in brackish water and a couple of his magazines floating across the room. As he stomped around in water up to his ankles, he saw a total disaster.

The boxes of unpacked goods we'd stacked against the walls were completely soaked.  The entire place had a sickening moldy smell.  We spent the next few days tossing out some of our most treasured possessions-our precious books, our photo albums, and our favorite couches and chairs-even the linings of two of our suitcases were soaked.  We tried to clean some our things, but the smell and the water stains remained.We spent days washing and rewashing towells, sheets, and clothing, but many things had stains that wouldn't come out.

The apartment management did put us up in a hotel for a few days, but that was the extent of their help.  When we asked for reimbursement for our losses, we were told we had to produce the original receipts to receive any compensation.  Naturally, those were long gone.

I'd like to say our troubles ended there, but they were only beginning. Our computer and DVD player had gotten wet and wouldn't operate.  The repair shop told us they were too badly damaged and there was nothing they could do.  With all of our relocation expenses, we couldn't even afford to replace things.  We lived a makeshift lifestyle for months while we tried to get back on our feet. 

We thought of suing the apartment complex, but with the stresses of the move, the house hunt and the commuter marriage, we knew we coudn't handle any more hassles.  We decided to chalk it up to experience, and to never forget the lesson we learned:  things alway go wrong when you least expect it.   

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