A Melbourne family is facing financial ruin after a burst sewer main flooded their popular hot yoga studio with raw sewage. <\/p>\n
Yarra Valley Water reported the disaster as a \u201cmain sewer breakage in Arthur Street, Eltham, due to a mass of tree roots\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kangaroo Ground mother of four Sarah Crock has since lost her yoga business, and is about to lose her family home aftter a simple $200,000 compensation claim dragged out over five years into a multimillion-dollar catastrophe.<\/p>\n
Mrs Crock says her family\u2019s nightmare began in July 2021, when a visit to check on the heated studio during a Covid lockdown left her vomiting and in tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went in because we were in lockdown and over the weekend it occurred to me that studio\u2019s heater timer needed to be turned off,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI opened the door to reception and there was muck all over the floor right up to the door, and at this point I had not realised there had been an explosion of sewage \u2026 it was coming up the walls and it absolutely stunk.<\/p>\n
The studio then had to be quarantined from the 25 other shops in the Eltham Town Mall, with plastic zippered walls, with the studio unable to be accessed without mechanised breathing equipment for months. <\/p>\n
Repair works then took years, with the studio unable to reopen until April 2023, by which point there had still been no compensation and the building remained impaired. <\/p>\n
Mrs Crock\u2019s husband Damian said representatives for Yarra Valley Water had indicated their client had a lot of infrastructure across Victoria and you can\u2019t expect them to maintain it all.<\/p>\n
He was also told the sewer main in question had an excellent service history, at odds with the reported \u201cmass of tree roots\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then when we sued them in 2023 Yarra Valley Water Corporation indicated that it did not perform any of the works,\u201d Mrs Crock said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were just gobsmacked\u201d.<\/p>\n
The studio was equipped with a world class extraction system which was destroyed.<\/p>\n
As a result, the studio\u2019s configuration had to be permanently changed, it was impossible to reinstall an extraction system and Mrs Crock says that in April they were forced to sell the premises at a massive loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe needed to refinance which was already challenging for a business like ours in the middle of a pandemic, having contaminated premises made that even harder and we fell into the hands of a predatory lender,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cHad we just been compensated we wouldn\u2019t be where we are now, we\u2019ve now had to sell our family home of 16 years, and my aviation business is now on the verge of destruction.\u201d <\/p>\n
A Victorian government spokeswoman said \u201cthis matter is currently before VCAT and Yarra Valley Water is fully participating\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore it is not appropriate to comment further,\u201d the spokeswoman said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Melbourne family is facing financial ruin after a burst sewer main flooded their popular hot yoga studio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23,133,8224,8237,8229,8217,8235,8214,8236,8225,6964,8228,8213,8227,8216,8232,260,3170,120,8230,8226,8222,8219,8223,8218,8220,8233,68,8231,8215,8221,8234],"class_list":{"0":"post-6780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-melbourne","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-australia-and-new-zealand","10":"tag-aviation-business","11":"tag-burst-sewer","12":"tag-class-extraction-system","13":"tag-compensation-fight","14":"tag-damian","15":"tag-data-breach-hits","16":"tag-extraction-system","17":"tag-family-home","18":"tag-federation-square","19":"tag-financial-ruin","20":"tag-five-year-nightmare","21":"tag-government-spokeswoman","22":"tag-heater-timer","23":"tag-kangaroo-ground","24":"tag-melbourne","25":"tag-news-headlines","26":"tag-oceania","27":"tag-popular-yoga-studio","28":"tag-repair-works","29":"tag-ryan-bourke","30":"tag-service-history","31":"tag-sewer-breakage","32":"tag-sewer-burst","33":"tag-tree-roots","34":"tag-ventia","35":"tag-victoria","36":"tag-world-class-extraction","37":"tag-yarra-valley-water","38":"tag-yoga-business","39":"tag-yoga-studio"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}