When RaDeanna Wehri returned to her Mandan home from Memorial Day vacation, she stared in disbelief down into the bare mess of her basement.

Because what had been nearly three years and tens of thousands of dollars of remodeling was gone:The laminate floor was ripped down to concrete, her hand-tiled bathroom was stripped, new drywall destroyed.

A few days before, neighbor Brett Woodward came home to 3 inches of sludge in his own basement, with a couple of inches of water on top. He had worked quickly to save the possessions on upper shelves, but lost a lot of items, eventually having to rip out wood flooring and several walls.

The owner of a local cleaning company had his crew, including two of his daughters, hauling mud out of basements until nearly midnight in at least two homes.

"The younger of the two girls, she was (a former) Miss North Dakota, and she's out there slinging mud and poop and everything else right along with the rest of them,"said Jerry Thomas, owner of Specialized Cleaning and Restoration.

Now, the homeowners just want to know what's going to happen to their homes, who's going to pay for damage caused by a major sewage back-up, and when.

But city officials, a construction company and insurance adjusters are also still trying to sort that out.

"That really hasn't been decided and probably won't be decided for some time," Tom Little, Mandan city engineer, said. "(We)instructed the contractor to contact all potential parties along that route."

He said he's also referring anyone who calls his office with problems to contact the contractor, Strata Corp., which is working on the reconstruction of Collins Avenue.

Late May 25 or early on May 26, heavy rain rushing down Collins Avenue - which has been undergoing reconstruction - infiltrated an abandoned sanitary sewer pipe running under a dug-out water main trench. Water made its way into an operating sanitary sewer system, which may have caused the sewage back-up into at least 14 homes on the 300 and 400 blocks adjacent to Collins Avenue.

Ron Reiswig with Strata said insurance adjusters looked at the homes on Monday; the insurance companies for both Strata and Strata's subcontractor, United Crane and Excavation, had hired local adjustment company Heinrich and Company Insurance Adjusters to handle the claims.

"What caused it is obvious,"Reiswig said. "Water got into the sanitary system. How that happened, we're not sure."

Emory Splitt, manager atHeinrich, said they are also investigating the initial cause of the incident to help decide who is responsible for the damages.

Wehri said her daughter, Gwen, first noticed "something dark in the basement"Friday night. They called Specialized Cleaning and Restoration, who worked through sludge in her home until midnight. The cleaning company eventually began work on Woodward's home, too.

"My understanding is that the first day or so, they took out between 500 or 700 gallons of water and mud," from her basement,Wehri said, adding that water marks were above a foot in some places.

All of that mud, in a brand new, refinished basement, she added. It brought tears to her eyes when she first saw the damage.

Woodward only had about three to four inches in some places, he said, which came up through the floor drain and through a sink. But the cleaning required taking out some walls and ripping out the base of others.

Thomas said the homes had a "category three" water loss, which means the water was grossly contaminated.

"Those are nasty jobs for the personnel,"Thomas said."We worked until 12:30 a.m. Some of the people that day were on other jobs in the morning. That was an 18-hour day for some people."

Thomas said he's still working on the estimates for cleaning costs in the homes, and for now, the bills will go to the homeowners.

"The homeowner hired us, so the homeowner basically gets the bill,"Thomas said. "So what he does with that bill, that's who we're basically working for."

(Reach reporter Crystal R. Reid at 250-8261 or crystal.reid@;bismarcktribune.com.)