Seniors spending Christmas in their homes after pipe burst cut last year's holiday short

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It’s been one year since a frozen pipe burst caused havoc at a north Charlotte apartment complex for seniors.

Last Christmas, extremely low temperatures caused a pipe rupture to flood the Magnolia Senior Apartments. About 80 seniors were forced out of their homes for most of the year.

After months of construction and renovations, the last set of seniors moved back last month.

One of the seniors, Valerie Price said she is just glad to be back in her home this Christmas. Although she is a little nervous about the cold weather, she is just hoping to make it smoothly through this winter season and the holidays.

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“There's nothing like having your own,” Price said.

She was with her family when she got the call last year.

“I never even got to have dinner,” Price said. “I had to rush back over here to get the few things that i could out of my apartment.

Price said it was hard to wrap her head around it all.

“This can't be happening. Not on Christmas. You know, not today,” Price said. “Everyone was in the lobby. They didn't know what was going on, what to do. You know, it was just a mess.”

Mosaic Development Group, Executive Director Bill Bolstad who owns Magnolia said there was flooding in about two-thirds of the building.

“The damage was just extensive,” Bolstad said. “It took the better part of this year to get the building put back together. I mean, we had to completely gut it and rehab it.”

Dozens of seniors stayed at hotels for months thanks to the support of the city of Charlotte and local community organizations. Some also moved in with family and friends.

After months of hard work, Magnolia was back. Bolstad said they are keeping an extra eye on those pipes.

“We are taking as much precaution as we can, you know, we're making sure that any potential line that could freeze up is drained,” Bolstad said. “We are in that building and every other building we can think of, because we want to make sure that nothing like this occurs again.”

Champion House of Care has been assisting the seniors from the beginning and helped the last group move back in, in November.

“To see them back in their home is just incredible because most of them thought they wouldn’t make it back,” Janette Kinard, Exec Dir. at Champion House of Care, said. “Now that they're back and they're excited. We finally got everybody's furniture in a place.”

The organization is still collecting donations; furniture and other household items to help replace some of the belongings seniors lost.

Residents now settled in are looking forward to a more peaceful Christmas.

“Everybody's just happy to be home,” said Price.

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