Woman loses thousands of dollars worth of belongings in Bay View storage unit flood

BAY VIEW, Wis. (CBS 58) -- A Cudahy woman lost valuable and irreplaceable possessions in a storage unit flood. Now, she's calling negligence.

Thousands of dollars of furniture had to be thrown away. Baby photos and scrapbooks were also destroyed. Storage Master claims a drain backup caused the flood and neither insurance nor the storage contract covers that. 

The woman documented the damage well.

"The stuff that had a significant meaning to me personally was ruined," she said.

Earlier this month, she found 11 of her boxes sitting in a pool of water soaked through at the Bay View facility.

"Picture after picture, just mold growing on it. Unsalvageable and just sick to your stomach," she said.

Storage Master told her the water came from a drain backup and that her items were explicitly not protected.

Lynn doesn't buy that explanation and has filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

A representative with the BBB says it's important to be cautious before jumping into a storage agreement.

"Do your research. Look into the company to see if they've had complaints or customer reviews in the past," said Lisa Schiller with the Better Business Bureau of Wisconsin.

To make matters worse, Lynn believes her stuff was sitting in the water for days yet she says she was never notified.

"That to me has been the single most traumatic experience of knowing that it would've taken less than a minute to call me and they didn't and they knew they had a flood," the woman said.

Storage Master has not returned CBS 58 News request for a comment.

On the BBB website, Storage Master has an A rating. There have been four complaints in the past three years.