Franklin Quintanilla was asleep in his bed when the water started filling his room at the Travel Inn on Monday.
He was one of five people rescued by Egg Harbor Township firefighters from the floods that turned the stretch of Black Horse Pike into a lake.
But those who call the motel in the township’s West Atlantic City section home say they still need saving.
Broken doors, holes in walls and dirty, blood-stained mattresses are just some of the problems they deal with in small rooms they pay $300 each week to rent.
That was before the weekend storm filled their living spaces with rancid water.
A rescuer shows how deep the water was. Ravi Patel, the owners’ nephew, told BreakingAC that the residents were warned of the coming rain and told to find alternative living arrangements for a couple of days.
“What can you do when you tell people to leave and they refuse?” he asked.
They had nowhere to go, they said. Nowhere else they can afford.
The owners bear the responsibility to those who pay all they can to have a place to stay, township Police Chief Fred Spano said Monday.
“The frustration he had is representing basically all of us,” Mayor Laura Pfrommer said when reached the next day. “After every major water event, that area is constantly a problem.”
Representatives from the American Red Cross stopped by Tuesday, saying they were there to assess what was needed.
Scott Denney has seen is before in the year and four months he has lived there. There is never a return with help.
Those who live there do not have access to the resources other residents do, Pfrommer said.
“They need to feel safe and secure and be treated with dignity,” she said. “We’ve got to do something out there.”
Code enforcement would be coming out, Pfrommer said, adding that she was in contact with the county in hopes they would move to get health officials involved.
“We’ve got to find a long-term solution out there, that’s the bottom line to it all,” the mayor said. “We’re going to be as aggressive with this as we possibly can and see what we can do to actually get change. It’s been a decade trying to get things done out there.”
The residents left behind slept in wet beds Monday night, with floors streaked with mud.
By Tuesday afternoon, they had moved some of their belongings outside to try to dry them out. There are no cleaning facilities offered to them. No one even had come by with fresh sheets.
“They gave me a mop, but I’m having to clean it up,” Denney said in a text sent later Tuesday, with video showing him mopping his floor.
Quintanilla just moved in about three weeks ago, after a flood at the owners’ other motel on the White Horse Pike in Absecon.
“They said there weren’t the flooding problems here,” he said.
That was before the management plastered notes on each door, warning that “this property is in a flood-prone area,” and that “We are not responsible for any damage due to floodwater any other included in the room or outside of the room, such as vehicle, personal items, or other.”
The date on each notice says “January 1, 2014,” but the residents insist they were put up recently.
Quintanilla lost his vehicle to the water when he lived in their Absecon location. When the management relocated him, he also lost all the belongings he had no way to move, he said.
He gets up at 1 a.m. to catch a bus at the nearby Garden State Fuel and get to work in Absecon. That is why he was passed out in bed when the water began filling his room.
“Management doesn’t care and nobody wants to help us. We’re human beings just like anybody else,” said Abrahante, who shares a room with his wife and 17-year-old son.
Recently unable to afford rent, he cut a deal with the owners about two weeks ago to work maintenance in exchange for his family’s room.
He has seen some terrible things in that short time, he said, including a hole in one room’s floor filled with waste with a stench like something had died.
When the floods come, the water washes it out, sending whatever was in there into the water that filled the rooms during the flood and soaked into mattresses and furniture, Abrahante theorized.
He had not received any direction from his new employers about what work may need to be done in the cleanup by late Tuesday afternoon.
Owner Dee Patel arrived in the parking lot while the men spoke, minutes after a BreakingAC reporter asked the manager on duty about reaching the owners, and letting her know that there could be possible visits from code enforcement and health officials.
Owner Dee Patel points out that new frames for the beds put them up higher. Patel said work could not start until the water had fully receded, which did not happen until after high tide. She also said residents would get refunds for a few days.
That has never happened before, the men said later.
When asked about issues in the rooms that obviously were not caused by the floods, Patel said that they are working on the problems.
She pointed out new frames that lift the beds higher, but was not able to answer when and if new mattresses would come.
A Township Council meeting is set for 5 p.m. Wednesday. It was not clear if the issue would be raised at that time.
One of the heavily stained mattresses sits outside to dry. 
