Mold moving into apartments

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Mold moving into apartments

WPTV - West Palm Beach,FL*

Last Update: 1/30

Reported by: Carolyn Scofield

Photographer: Hendricks

http://www.wptv.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=acb02a58-deb5-

4622-8e94-7e82cf3abb2a

A Ft. Pierce couple says mold moved into their apartment…and they

had to move out.

Water floods the kitchen every time Mindy Booth takes a shower.

Something is beginning to grow inside the cabinet and three weeks

ago, doctors put Booth's daughter on a breathing machine.

" She's a year and four months, " says Booth. " And I have to sit here

in my lap and put this on her mouth while she cries to me because

she can't breathe. "

Booth believes mold is overrunning her apartment.

The problem gets worse next door. King and her boyfriend

took what they could salvage and left.

King called her landlords. She says they put a bucket under the

leak causing all the water problems upstairs.

King says did nothing to clean up the moisture and the mold started

to grow.

Now it covers almost everything in the apartment- the walls, the

cabinets, even the big-screen TV.

" We called an environmental specialist and asked him, `Are we

allowed to take that television, even if we blow it out?', " King

says. " Absolutely not, there's no way you can get all those spores

out of that television. "

In fact, a letter from cleanup company Servepro advised King to

throw away anything porous, including her bed and sofa.

King wants her landlords to pay for the losses, and Booth wants them

to fix the problem before her baby gets worse.

" Every night when I hold her and put that thing on her, she hates

it, " says Booth. " And I have to. I'm her Mom. I gotta do something

to try to make her better, but it's not getting any better, Nothing

is getting any better. "

and Zelma Knippenburg own the property. They say tenants

waited to report the water and mold problems, and they couldn't get

in to fix them.

The Knippenburgs returned King's security deposit and say

they've never had complaints in the 13 years they've owned the

building.