Burst Pipe Leaves 50-Unit Northeast Portland Apartment Building “a Near Total Loss”

Silas Hills was walking down the hallway of his Northeast Portland apartment on Monday afternoon when the ceiling caved in around him. Almost instantly, the apartment was knee deep in water. Hills, soaked, ran down four flights of stairs to the street as fire alarms blared.

Tenants of the Daveneaux, a 50-unit building, watched their belongings stream out the front door on a holiday afternoon. “It was a river,” recalled 45-year-old Brandon Traylor, who fled outside in the freezing cold with Frankie, his 1-year-old Boston terrier mix. “We were in shock.”

Anchor NW Property Group, which manages the four-story building at Northeast Couch Street and 20th Avenue, would tell them the next day, Jan. 16, that the building was “considered a near total loss.”

The Daveneaux, built in 2013, succumbed to a winter storm that has taken the lives of at least 10 people and whose ferocity and longevity have caught nearly every authority in the city unprepared. The destruction at the Daveneaux, however, may have displaced more people than any other single event.

The exact cause of the flood is not clear, although management suspects a burst pipe in the building’s fire suppression system. Tenants aren’t sure who to blame, but they are furious. There’s murmurs of potential litigation.

“I’m still in disbelief,” Hills says. He’s a professional coral farmer, and he lost many of his prized specimens when his living room ceiling caved in on his aquarium. “It feels like a dream I’m about to wake up from.”

Anchor has put up many Daveneaux tenants in the Jupiter Hotel down the street. Tenants are being allowed back in at certain times to retrieve their belongings—at least what can be carried down the stairs. The elevators aren’t functional.

“We’re on uncharted ground,” says Jim Rostel, Anchor NW’s chief operating officer. “We’ve never had anything happen like this.”

Pipes in four of his company’s buildings burst in the storm—although the damage at the Daveneaux was by far the most severe. The building made it through prior freezes just fine, and the fire suppression system had just been serviced last August, he said.

Maintenance crews are working around the clock to dry out the Daveneaux, Rostel said. It could be months before tenants can move back in. In the meantime, Anchor NW is scrambling to find them apartments in its other 31 buildings.

“They’re doing the best that they can considering the weather,” Traylor said. “We’re all trying to survive.”