Kearneys Spring family seek answers from Council after sewage floods home

As council workers flushed out a drain blockage at a manhole, a nearby home was flooded with raw sewage and faeces causing over $60,000 of damages and forcing a family to live out of suitcases for five months. Now the council is saying they’re not at fault.

When a Toowoomba nurse came home one night to a bad smell she never dreamt she would find her house flooded with faeces and raw sewage, forcing her family in temporary accommodation for five months.

Emergency nurses Sucheta and Sumit Kapoor have spent the past five months moving between houses with their two children after their Kearneys Spring house flooded with sewage in November 2022.

The incident has left the family rattled, frustrated and emotional with nowhere left to turn after receiving a letter from council telling them they are not at fault for the incident.

It was a rainy afternoon after school and Mrs Kapoor had left her two children, a 16-year-old and a 10-year-old, at home as she dried clothes at a laundromat.

As soon as she drove into her driveway she could smell a pungent stench.

“I ran inside and asked my son to check whether any toilet was overflowing,” she said.

It was then they noticed vile sludge coming from the master bedroom, and inside the room they found “the carpet was soaked in sewage water” with “faeces floating in the ensuite”.

Sucheta and Sumit Kapoor returned home one rainy night to find their house flooded with faeces and raw sewage. They are still seeking answers from Council, saying it was caused by workers flushing out a pipe.

Meanwhile, outside the house, council workers had accessed a manhole opposite the property on the footpath and were flushing it out with high pressure water to clear a blockage, she said.

Her kids told her the workers had knocked on the door earlier, but had not waited for her to return.

She said she ran outside and asked the workers to stop flushing the water through the drain as it was flooding her house.

But they kept flushing water through the hole, telling her they were just doing their job and needed to get the blockage cleared.

Sucheta and Sumit Kapoor returned home one rainy night to find their house flooded with sewage. They are still seeking answers from Council, saying it was caused by workers flushing out a drain.

As they finished off and were about to leave, Mrs Kapoor and her kids urged them to stay to get them to see what was happening in their house.

When Mr Kapoor finally came home from work, they had the workers call in their boss, and about an hour and a half later, he arrived.

Mrs Kapoor said she showed him the house and he gave her his number, a pamphlet and told her to get in touch with the council.

For the next couple of hours, and in heavy rain, the crew accessed the manhole on the Kapoor’s property and in the process, the back garden also flooded with sewage.

The council put the family up in a motel for three nights.

It took a month to clean the house, it was disinfected five to six times over, Mrs Kapoor said.

Sucheta and Sumit Kapoor returned home one rainy night to find their house flooded with sewage. They are still seeking answers from Council, saying it was caused by workers flushing out a drain.

Once clean, the house had to undergo a massive renovation, with the ankle-deep sewage seeping into the walls and floor of the house, and council workers digging up and disinfecting their backyard.

“We have lost so many things, I would not have even dreamt this could have happened, it’s like they beheaded us,” Mrs Kapoor said.

She said they have managed to claim insurance for contents and accommodation, but in terms of the almost $60,000 of renovations to the house, her insurance company says council should cover this.

She said she felt like “no one is listening”.

She has had petitions signed, along with numerous letters to the mayor, councillors and local members asking for support and answers.

On February 2, 2024, she said she received a letter from the Toowoomba Regional Council insurance officer saying the council were not at fault and would not compensate for any expenditure.

Toowoomba Regional Council chief executive Brain Pidgeon said it would be inappropriate for council to comment publicly as the matter is yet to be finalised.

Five months on, this weekend the Kapoors will move houses for the fifth time since November.