Ilana Joubert (30), a Geduld resident, woke up last Monday morning to find her front yard completely flooded with sewage water.
“If it wasn’t for the front porch, the sewage would have flooded into my house,” she says.
She adds that the water was only a few centimetres from the top of the porch.
“I reported it to the Ekurhuleni Metro and they came to inspect not long after I contacted them.”
Joubert says the officials told her that they cannot get the truck out to her residence immediately but noted the situation as urgent.
“I have a seven-year-old son and I felt that this was a major health risk to us as it was literally on our doorstep, we couldn’t live with the stench anymore.”
The sewage pushed out of a blocked manhole next to the property and leaked into Joubert’s yard, almost surrounding the house.
“My main concern was that there are air vents at the bottom of the wall and even those were completely flooded, I was scared of water damage if it lay there too long.”
The sewage seeped underneath the wall of the residence and outside on the pavement, creating another pool of sewage which flowed down the street.
On Thursday, Joubert says she contacted the health department in a desperate bid to have the situation rectified when she hadn’t achieve anything with the metro for two days.
“I was scared Lisa, my dog, would fall in the water as that is where she usually does her business and plays with her ball, I had to keep her away from the awful water all the time.”
On Thursday afternoon metro officials came to Joubert’s house and responded to her distressed calls.
The Addie is awaiting response from the Ekurhuleni Metro.
