The homeowner says the damage earlier this year could have been avoided if the city had just done its job.
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The homeowners accuse the city of failing to maintain its drainage system.
"Literally this whole area just flooded over," Jennifer Clack said.
Jennifer Clack is talking about the wall of water that swept through her garage January 20th.
"It was all the way up to here, and literally everything got lifted up and dropped on top of everything," Clack said.
A river of water rushed through the entire lower level of her house.
"I just kept thinking it was a bad dream I was going to wake up from. And my house and my life would be back together but no, not even close," said Clack.
It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to decontaminate and gut the house. Clack blames the city for what's happened.
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"It didn't look like any of the infrastructures around me was working the way it was supposed to, so that's just down right terrifying," Clack said.
Burlingame's city attorney couldn't comment but did say, "Burlingame was hit with a microburst rain event equivalent to a 500-year storm, and our storm water system is built to industry standards."
Clack's attorney says the city knew the drains couldn't hold up in a major rain event, and it had already paid two prior claims for storm damage at that same house, to the prior owner.
"The city in our complaint knew there were flood risks to this property related to storms and failure to clean the drains and didn't take any action," Clack's attorney Eric Buescher said.
All Clack's daughters want is to move back home again.
The City of Burlingame will be served next week.