Collyer's mansion/hoarding issues

[DeputyChiefGonzo]

If you have ever dealt with issues with people who hoard everything and everything... here is a website can help you understand the "reasons" for that behavior...

www.masshousing.com/hoarding

Even if you haven't dealt with hoarding before, it is just a matter of time.

[WD6956]

If you have ever dealt with issues with people who hoard everything and everything... here is a website can help you understand the "reasons" for that behavior...

www.masshousing.com/hoarding

Even if you haven't dealt with hoarding before, it is just a matter of time.

Thanks for the link.

I have caught some of the episodes of Hoarders on (A&E Network i think). Some of those places are NUTS. Total deathtraps for anybody inside if a fire breaks out. Floor to cieling, wall to wall combustibles. Talk about a fire load. Worst of all, some of these people live in Apartments putting their neighbors at risk.

A few years back a friend of mine in the NY town where i grew up called to tell me a guy that we used to hang out with was on the verge of being evicted because his apartment was FILLED with junk. I went down the following weekend to help clean his place out to hopefully keep him from getting evicted. I was not prepared for how bad the place really was. One of the biggest thing he collected was old newspapers. They were everywhere. But his 4 or 5 cats used them as a toilet as well. A two bedroom apartment with newspapers and boxes of junk EVERYWHERE 6 feet high and much of it covered in cat **** and poop. We actually went to a fire Station and since i knew some of them from when i used to live in the town, asked to borrow two spare SCBA's and 4 cylinders. We spent about 6 hours carrying stuff out to dumpsters. And to keep the slob out of the way, he was ferrying empty cylinders back and forth to the station to get refilled. That was the longest i ever spent almost continuously using an SCBA. Not fun. But we thanked the local FF's for their help and made a generous dontation to their house fund and they were happy.

Hoarding is bad news.

[penman]

If you have ever dealt with issues with people who hoard everything and everything... here is a website can help you understand the "reasons" for that behavior...

www.masshousing.com/hoarding

Even if you haven't dealt with hoarding before, it is just a matter of time.

Many thanks for the heads up. We have at least 3 in town but it's the ones we don't know that will be a problem. Great site.
Ed

[cozmosis]

In my volunteer days, our fire chief happened to know one guy in particular that had a hoarding problem. I don't remember why the chief had the occasion to see inside the man's house, but he made it clear after his visit that we would not conduct interior operations in the home. Sure enough, the house caught fire a couple of years later. I'm sure we were spared injuries (or worse) from knowing what was inside the house and adjusting our tactics accordingly.

These days, I work in an upscale bedroom community outside of Little Rock. Hoarding is a mental illness, which means that it's not limited to lower income people. You can find hoarders in any neighborhood and from any socio-economic group.

[tree68]

I worked with a hoarder. She lived in a house in the country - the house in the city was full.

When the country house burned she had to be physically restrained from going back in to save her 'stuff.'

[snowball]

We went to a CO alarm at a residence last year. This woman was a hoarder and did not clean her home. The curtains were literally rotting off the rod, mildew was eating the parts of exposed carpet away, the sink was full of pots and pans that were rusty or oxidized. There was more but I'll skip to the meat. As I was monitoring a bedroom, I saw hanging on a chair, a uniform shirt with a county health inspectors I.D. badge, with her photo on it.

[pasobuff]

I've been to a couple of houses that belonged to hoarders - those are not fun....one was a structure fire in the basement - folded up cereal boxes caught fire...to get through the house you had to follow a path.....

It is unfortunate there are people who live this way, and yes, it is a disease - thankfully there are those who can get help.....

One thing I can't quite understand is the family members (adult) who enable people to allow this to happen and get to such an extreme.

[cvfd9ff]

Just this past august we had an individual perish in a fire because of hoarding and we couldnt get to him...sad part was we could see him laying on the floor 6 feet away from us and we ended up nearly getting ourselves trapped when the pile came tumbling down on top of us....definately a scary situation