Oil spill forces Dartmouth couple out of home

An elderly Dartmouth, N.S., couple has been forced out of their home after a thief cut a small piece of copper line worth about $6 from their furnace tank, leaving their basement flooded with oil.

Joe Balogh, 80, and his wife, Fern,had to leave their home on Windmill Road until the oil can be cleaned up because prolonged exposure to the fumes could cause serious illness.

Balogh can't believe what happened while they slept Wednesday night.

"I got up and I come down here and, of course, the smell was quite strong because it's down in the basement," he said Thursday. "So, I opened the basement door and looked down and holy God, there was all the pools of oil laying."

The smell of oil in the basementwas so strong, it made it difficult to breathe. Firefighters placed absorbent cloths and sand to try to soak some of it up.

The tank was three-quarters full, and no one is sure how much of that made it inside the house.

According to the contractor,it will take months to clean up the mess because the oil seeped through the basement floor into the soil below.

The Baloghs didn't want to leave their home, but they had no choice.

"We got nowhere else to go. I mean, I'm 80 years old and I'm a cancer patient," Joe Balogh said.

"I'm on cancer medications here and I've got to space them out. I've got to take so many pills a day and my heart medication because I've had open heart surgery, too."

The elderly couple also didn't want to leave their cat, Prince, behind.

Halifax Regional Police Const. Donny Beull was so moved by the couple's plight he contacted their church to arrange temporary shelter. They are now staying with their pastor until a more suitable place can be found.

He even found a vet willing to take Prince for a day or two while the couple finds a place to stay during the cleanup.

A scrap dealer estimated the value of the copper stolen to be $6 at the most.The cleanup could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Balogh hopes his insurance will cover it.

"The cost of this stuff, you know. I mean here we are on a fixed income at our age and for some idiot to come and do something like this," he said.

"I can't understand it for a couple of dollars. It's just not worth it."

Balogh said the most frustrating thing is that the shutoff valve for the oil tank was right beside the copper line. If the thief had closed the valve, no oil would have leaked out of the tank.