By Tim Potter
Wichita Eagle
WICHITA, Kan. — A Wichita woman has jammed her home with so much stuff that she has to sleep on her porch or in her car.
There is only one remaining path in the house, and it leads to the bathroom. Her elderly parents, who once lived upstairs, had to be removed from the home for their safety.
And that’s just one of the hundreds of known hoarding situations in the Wichita area, an official says.
Hoarding can lead to tragedy.
On Tuesday morning, at a house in the 700 block of South Edgemoor, boxes and stacks of items hampered Wichita firefighters’ ability to get to a man and his German shepherd, acting Fire Marshal Stuart Bevis said Wednesday. When crews arrived, flames were coming from the house. After making an initial entry, firefighters weren’t able to find the man, partly because of all the items stored inside, Bevis said.
Fire crews had to cut through a back wall to get access, and after an extensive search, they found the bodies of the man, in his 60s, and the dog. The man’s identity hadn’t been confirmed as of Wednesday afternoon.
Fire crews increasingly are encountering hoarding. A room full of stuff adds fuel to a fire. And the more intense fire raises the risk of a structural collapse, Bevis said.
“It has the potential to be a complete catastrophe,” he said.
Bevis noted that there is a community effort to help people with hoarding problems.
The person helping to lead that effort is Susanne Welshans, code enforcement liaison with the Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department. Welshans also is coordinator with the Wichita/Sedgwick County Hoarding Coalition, which investigates referrals about hoarding. The concern is that hoarding can threaten safety; the idea also is to help hoarders deal with their problem. The coalition includes volunteers and officials who work in code enforcement, fire safety and mental health.
Welshans wasn’t familiar with the house on South Edgemoor where the man and his dog were found amid what fire officials said was a hoarding situation.
Usually, the code enforcers learn of hoarding when it extends to items stored outside a home, where they can be more easily seen.
Enforcement can lead to a court proceeding where fines are assessed or a cleanup is ordered, with the cost charged to the homeowner.
“It’s a huge problem,” Welshans said. “It does not discriminate.”
Since March 2016, she has received 370 referrals in her job with the metropolitan government agency. Almost half of those referrals involve hoarding, she said.
“And that’s just in a little over a year.”
Welshans cited the case of the woman who has only one path in her home. “She has no access to her bedroom; there is no path to anything but the bathroom.” The woman constantly has an open case with the agency.
There’s another case with a man who is known to run an extension cord from his home to a little space heater in his truck, where he sleeps because he can’t get into his packed home, Welshans said.
Another person sleeps in a recliner by the front door because the rest of the home is inaccessible.
People hoard all kinds of things.
Food hoarders risk food poisoning, Welshans said. Animal hoarders risk sickness from bacteria. Some hoarders expose themselves to breathing mold. And hoarders invite pests to infest their homes.
Children can be endangered, she said, and sometimes hoarding investigations prompt reports to child-protection agencies.
Often, the people behind the stories have some kind of mental illness, “although many of them are very functional in other areas of their life,” Welshans said.
In a 2016 article in A New View, published by Prairie View, social worker and hoarding specialist Nancy Trout wrote: “Hoarding Disorder defines the struggle that a person has relative to possessions.
“The need to save and the inability to discard results in extreme clutter which inhibits use of space and impairs functioning. Although much of the stuff seems useless to others, to the person who owns the possessions, each piece has importance.”
The article is paired with a list of tips offered by a support group called the Clutter Cleaners Club.
Tip No. 1: “Do not judge the person with clutter.”
The thought process that leads to hoarding can start in childhood, and eventually it can be a problem that overwhelms the hoarder, Welshans said.
Families need to pay attention and seek help for their relatives, she said.
Around Wichita, when enforcers become aware of a safety hazard, they can use what’s called an administrative search warrant to get inside a home to investigate. Officials must convince a judge to get a warrant.
Sometimes, the resident will invite them in, or if it’s a renter, a landlord can provide access.
Many times, hoarders don’t want anyone to visit because they’re embarrassed, Welshans said.
Copyright 2017 Wichita Eagle
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