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Detroit home under construction floods after water mishap

Homeowner blames city of Detroit for issue

DETROIT – A Detroit homeowner is blaming the city after water filled up inside her house.

“I got out of the car to look, and the water was just flowing. So I knew the water had to be on,” said Dawnitta Morris.

Water was filling up Dawnitta Morris’ basement and flowing into the yard and street on Manistique Street. She recently bought up the home from the Detroit Land Bank Authority and was working to fix it up.

“This is a lot of money you got to come out of to repair this stuff, restore it. I just had this house sanitized and everything. Now I got to go through all of that, all over again,” said Morris.

Morris claims the city was in her neighborhood working and somehow they turned the water on to the home, but because of the repairs, her house wasn’t ready for water.

“The water is all the way up to the top and I’m not about to chance it,” she said. “I just went through this as far as the flood. I have a newborn baby. I just went through this with the flood, lost all of my stuff at the end of June.”

Morris claims she called the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. Local 4 talked to Palencia Mobley, DWSD deputy director and chief engineer.

“DWSD didn’t come and turn the water on.  When we got there, we saw that there was something that had been done to the stop box that prevented us from doing the shutoff,” Mobley said.

Mobley said her crews immediately began the process to fix things.

“We put in a request for a crew to come dig the stop box up so that it can be replaced,” she said.

More: Local news coverage