GREENSBORO, N.C. — What started as an ordinary afternoon lunch turned into a homeowner’s worst nightmare for Clare Olthoff.

“I was having lunch, and my phone rang,” Olthoff said. “My neighbor said his place was absolutely flooded.”

When Olthoff stepped into her own condo, the damage was even worse.

“I came in here, and I had solid sewage coming up from the toilet, the bathroom, the sink,” she said.

The raw sewage was an inch deep in some places. Olthoff grabbed every towel she could find to try to soak it up.

A plumber later discovered the cause — a crushed sewer line believed to have been damaged by a tree company hired by Duke Energy to clear branches.

“We tried to clean it best as possible,” Olthoff said. “It stunk here for two and a half months.”

The initial repairs to the homeo

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