If you can imagine having to use a bottle of water to take a shower, brush your teeth and at times use it to flush the toilet , that is what the tenants of one northeast Bakersfield apartment complex had to do for almost 36 hours.
“None of us were told anything, we found out by going to the neighbors and asking 'hey do you guys have water?’,” said Melissa Vasquez a tenant of the complex.
Tenants say the water was turned off yesterday morning after an underground pipe had broken and was gushing water down the street.
“I tried to get ahold of the manager and she said the city had turned off the water but we were never given any notice that even the city was going to turn off the water or anything that was going on,” said Vasquez.
Vasquez saying the line of communication from the property owners was non-existent, forcing most people to ask the workers fixing the problem what actually happened.
“I think there was a big lack of communication because even if the pipe burst, when the city came out here I'm pretty sure they said 'hey we're going to have to turn this off'. They should have notified us and said hey the water's going to get turned off cause we just went to run the faucets and there's nothing on,” said Vasquez.
And now after going through this experience, Vasquez says she and her family understand just how essential running water really is,
“We can't even wash dishes, you can't flush your toilet, you can't take a shower, can't wash your hands whenever they're dirty so it's very essential to have running water,” said Vasquez.
Just hoping the same can be said when it comes to proper communication.
“We want to be treated like tenants should be treated,” said Vasquez. “There would be no issues if there were better communication then I think that they wouldn't have that many unhappy tenants here.”
As for why the tenats were not notified of the water being turned off, 23ABC did reach out to both the property management company as well as the onsite manager and still have not received any comment back.
