Tons of Rotting Garbage Found in Woman’s Home

Tons of rotting garbage accumulated over a 20-year period have been discovered at the home of a Pomona woman, officials said Tuesday.

“There’s everything imaginable in there--clothes, rotting food, rats, bugs, you name it. It’s unbelievable,” Pomona Fire Chief Tom Fee said.

He estimated that the cleanup, ordered by city officials and begun Monday, would be completed today.

“I’ve been in some pretty ugly homes, but it’s the worst house I’ve ever seen,” Fire Capt. Terry Staudenmayer said as masked excavation crews, using a tractor, scooped up the filth and hauled it away.

Drastic Action

Homeowner Erleen Burman, 71, was unhappy with the drastic action, however, protesting that she had been accumulating the contents of the single-story home, in a neighborhood of $100,000 houses in the 1200 block of West 7th Street, for years.

“It’s my whole life,” she said.

Burman conceded that she has not cleaned her house in years, explaining: “I’ve been sick for 20 years. I’m trying to find another husband. I need somebody to help me, you know, paint the house and help pay for the food.”

The retired hairdresser said she sleeps, but does not eat, in her home.

“I struggle off somewhere to get something to eat and then come back here for a rest,” she said, adding that she frequently visits her daughter’s home.

At least 20 tons of garbage and seven refrigerators had been removed by Tuesday from the back yard by a private contractor hired for $4,000 to clear away the garbage. The homeowner must pay the costs.

“I carried out stacks of wood completely rotten with termites,” contractor Curnelius King said. “I flipped over a refrigerator, and a rat jumped straight in the air.”

But most of the trash and garbage, stacked 3 feet high in some places, was inside the house.

False Alarm

Fire officials originally became aware of the filth about five years ago while investigating a fire call that turned out to be a false alarm, Staudenmayer said. They were unable to do anything at that time, he said.

“If it’s not producing rats, we can’t do anything,” he explained, adding that the case was then turned over to the Los Angeles County Health Services Department.

The Fire Department was called back to the house on March 19 because Burman had not been seen for some time, and neighbors were describing “hundreds of rats on the roof,” Staudenmayer said. The captain said he used “tracking techniques,” following beaten paths through piles of garbage, in a fruitless, 90-minute search for the homeowner.

“It’s one of the more eerie things I’ve done,” Staudenmayer said, adding that Burman eventually showed up at the home.

Although she is shut out of her home now, Burman will be allowed to return “as soon as the hazard is abated,” Fire Department Division Chief Lyn LaRochelle said.

“I would leave now only on one term and that’s if I had a heart attack,” Burman said.