SUMTER, S.C. — A broken elevator, an emergency evacuation and hotel rooms as homes — at least temporarily. That's the situation for nearly 50 Sumter residents after a visit by Sumter Fire Department.
At the Garden Circle Apartments on East Liberty Street, yellow tape behind me lines the building. It was set out by the Sumter Fire Department when it came to evacuate residents on Tuesday night.
"Literally the police, EMS, it was like every single car in Sumter was there," Garden Circle resident Siri Taylor explains.
Taylor says she has lived at the complex for six years and had a relative call the fire department because the elevator had not been working.
"I have to walk up and down seven flights of stairs and it's almost impossible," Taylor, who has a broken femur, details. "It takes everything out of me to do that."
"It cut off for three days and we had no elevator so we had to walk down the stairs to get whatever we need," Quheira Robinson shares.
"I have no legs, I’m disabled and I couldn't get in or out. I was locked up for over a month in there," James Edward Lee says about the fourth floor apartment unit he's lived in for five and a half months. "I couldn't get out. I couldn't’ get to the store. I couldn't you know get to places I needed to be because the elevator."
An elevator that residents say has been broken for a couple of weeks.
"I’m sorry to the tenants, especially to the person that is handicapped," Amalfi Gayosso, the manager of 202 Sumter PF — which owns the property — said on the phone.
Gayosso told meshe was not aware the elevator had been broken for over 20 days.
"The elevator company is going to go fix it today and I don’t know if it will be fixed either today or tomorrow and the plan is that the tenants can move back tomorrow or the day after tomorrow," Gayosso explains. "I didn’t realize it had actually been a long time [since the elevator was broken]."
She also says a company has been contacted to fix the fire alarm and fire suppression systems, which Sumter Fire Division Chief Joey Duggan says is the life safety issue that caused his department to shut down the building.
"If the life safety issues are not in place, and in compliance, then they will not be opened back up until that happens," Duggan details.
Gayosso tells me her company is paying for all 47 residents to stay in hotels and motels. After that, she expects they can move back into the building.
"I think that they are working diligently to try to get all of this fixed and becoming compliant so they can go and get things back open," Duggan shares.
Duggan says he can’t give a timeline on how long that might take because it’s up to the company that the property owner uses to check the fire alarm and supression system.
"What we do know is we got this call from a concerned citizen which we're glad that they did call because it's people like that that are going to save lives," Duggan shares. "You know, we need people that are going to step up and let us know that these issues are out there. And then we can in turn, go ahead and try to you know enforce code and do things like that."
When it comes to residents like Robert Harden, they're ready for their elevator to be fixed so they can move back home.
"I can’t say it’s been awful because I choose to live there. It's been a great location, ideal location, that sort of thing," Harden shrugs. "I didn’t want to go anywhere else. It was home to me for whatever reason."