Sewage flood questions

[spiralingbob]

My wife and I went away for the labor day weekend. When we were leaving on Saturday morning, we noticed that some sewage came up from our shower drain, and a puddle was forming around a floor drain located right outside our garden door (we have a garden-level duplex). I immediately notified our landlord that there was a potential sewage backup, and my next door neighbor, also on the same floor, notified him as well the previous evening.
The landlord failed to send anyone to check on the problem for over 24 hours. At this point, our entire floor was flooded with sewage, and our brand new carpet which was covering the 2 rooms was completely drenched in sewage water, every square inch. We had some communication with him while we were away, and he failed to effectively communicate the severity of the problem, saying that the carpet was just a little wet, it was only water, take a look at it when you get home and call me, "Don't get crazy", etc...
We got home and discovered a horror scene in our apartment, the carpet drenched in sewage water, toilet paper on the floor, and a horrible stench. It should be noted that one of the rooms is our bedroom.
As we discovered while en route home on Monday that the condition of our apartment was not so good (thanks to our neighbor, who took a look for us), we got the landlord to agree to us hiring a cleaning and sanitizing service, and they would pay for it. His words were "I can't get anyone to come clean it up on the holiday", although a quick google search from my blackberry immediately produced a list of companies who were willing to come clean up immediately.
We did indeed hire a company to come, discard the carpet (it was beyond repair), and to leave some high powered fans and dehumidifiers for 3 days to air the place out. It wasn't cheap, over $2000, but the building management gave us permission via email, and didn't ask us to get approval on the price.
The landlord has expressed that he's not happy about the price (he would have preferred the super come and sprinkle some deodorizing powder on our sewage-drenched carpet and call it a day), but he has not yet said he wouldn't pay.
I contacted our renters insurance, but our insurance will not cover damage caused by flood or sewage problems.

My question is, what are our chances of having him reimburse us for the cost of the carpet? We installed it ourselves a month ago, and it's now sitting in trash bags by the curb. The management company has immediately said that this sewage flood did NOT happen due to negligence by the landlord. But I feel like 24 hours is an awful long time to wait to react to an urgent situation involving raw sewage leaking into my apartment. And his reason was, "the super was unavailable, so she wasn't able to get there until late that night". Shouldn't he have called someone else, an emergency flood service, or SOMETHING, to come and deal with an apartment with a sewage backup? We came home to an uninhabitable apartment, and feel as if this could have been prevented.

We basically just want them to reimburse us for the cleaning, plus the cost of our carpet. There were other things that were damaged and had to be thrown out, but I'll be happy with just the carpet.

Any insights as to what our chances are/what our course of action should be?

Thanks, and sorry for the drawn-out story! I'm glad this site exists!

[queensborough]

I would think that the owner of the building would have home owners insurance that would cover this type of damage. He should file a claim with his insurance company. You should certainly be reimbursed for your losses.

[TenantNet]

Without commenting on the LL liability, I would think the renters insurance would cover this. Certain things are not covered, i.e., earthquakes, and require separate riders.

Under most policies, I do not know if floods are covered without separate riders. It might depend on where you live. For example, with all the damage caused by Hurricane Irene, many living in flood plains are having their houses flooded. And Irene was so bad that areas not normally prone to floods, i.e., Catskills, Vermont, have flood damage.

But in your case it's really not a natural flood if I read your post correctly. I was checking on renters insurance a while back and one company said it did not cover natural floods, but did cover water damage such as burst pipes. Did something like that happen here? Did something go wrong with the building's plumbing or sewer system? How about the septic system if there is one? It seems the LL wants you to believe it's not his fault and that he responded in a reasonable time.