Mould
mystery exiles homeowners from house
JOE
FIORITO
There should be a tree in the living room and there
should be lights and decorations. Instead, the bungalow is dark and empty,
save for the sparrow in the birdhouse on the porch. Jan and Cathy won't be
home for Christmas.
They are living out of their Jeep and bunking on a cot courtesy of
some cousins. Jan says his house — post-war stucco, pink and salmon, on
Islington south of Bloor — makes him and Cathy sick. He says it's full of
mould.
He pulled up into the drive the other day to take a look around.
His Jeep was crammed. He pointed to some garbage bags. "This is our stuff.
It's just what we could grab. Our clothes." He coughed. "And a vacuum
cleaner." He coughed again. Two little dogs jumped up and down on the back
seat. Cathy said, "This is Sam and this is Grace." Jan said, "It's a
beautiful house."
He nodded towards the front window. He coughed. "There's art on the
walls. The fireplace is painted to match two antique chairs." Cathy said,
"The kitchen is filled with Coca-Cola stuff. A lot of trays and tins.
Coca-Cola Barbie. And old Coke ads, we had them framed." They wouldn't
open the door and let me in. They were afraid.
We talked on the sidewalk. Cathy clutched a thick file of papers.
Jan unspooled the story. "It started a couple of years ago. They were
re-doing Islington Avenue. Someone came and did a videotape inspection of
our house. He said everything was okay. They dug up the street and
repaved." Jan noticed problems the following spring.
"We could smell a gassy smell. The contractor came back and did
some more digging. They dug up our driveway a couple of times. I have no
idea why." The house shook from all the digging. His front yard was left
in a mess. He couldn't get the contractor to fix it. You know how it goes.
You call, you get put on hold, you give up. The next year, he started
getting sick.
The basement, which he says had been dry for the previous 11 years,
now seemed damp. He checked the washing machine. He called a foundation
guy. He had the little pool in the backyard checked. No problems anywhere.
He bought a dehumidifier. He'd never needed one before.
Then Jan had surgery. He was in the hospital for a while. His
illness lingered. He said, "We came home. We'd been out of the house for a
month. I opened a closet. There was black stuff on the wall. My leather
coats had black stuff all over them." Cathy said, "We cleaned it up." Jan
said, "I kept getting sicker. The health nurse came. My skin was red and
getting redder."
Cathy's mother came for Christmas last year. She slept in the
basement. Cathy said, "She got really sick ... the same symptoms we had.
Headaches, vomiting, her skin looked green." Cathy's mother went back to
Montreal. They couldn't figure it out.
Jan played a hunch a while ago. He tore up the basement carpet and
sent a patch of it, along with samples of his leather coat, to a lab in
Guelph. The lab report indicates the presence of aspergillus penicillium
and stachybotrys chartarum. Those are moulds and they are present
everywhere, although not usually in wall-blackening, coat-rotting
quantities.
The scientist at the lab told Jan to check all the pipes in the
house. He eventually found two pipes with lengthy, leaking hairline
cracks. He called his insurance company. They sent an inspector. Jan got a
letter saying that he was covered for water damage, but an ongoing leak
was not considered water damage, and the policy had a mould exclusion
clause, and yadda-yadda, but maybe they'd give him a bit of money for the
carpet.
Jan then called a company which specializes in mould cleanup. He
said a guy came to examine the house. The guy took a look, said he'd never
seen anything quite so extensive and hightailed it, saying as he left "The
house is toast. Get out."
Jan and Cathy moved into a motel a couple of months ago. They've
tried to go back to the house a couple of times. As soon as they do, their
eyes start to water and Jan's cough gets worse. They were staying at his
sister's place for a time. Now they are staying with cousins. And all
their stuff is in the Jeep.
Jan says he has called the city, the contractor, public health, and
his local councillor. He has sent e-mails. He has begged. He has pleaded.
Cathy keeps it all in the file — notes, dates, phone numbers. Jan has seen
a doctor who specializes in mould-related illness. He still seems ill. He
looks like hell. He has tried to find the tape of the video inspection; no
luck. He said someone from the city promised to call the contractor. If
such a call was ever made, nothing has come of it. Nobody seems to care.
No one calls him back.
I asked where they planned to spend the holidays.
Cathy started to cry and Jan coughed again.
Merry Christmas, huh?
Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
E-mail: jfiorito@thestar.ca
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