California E&S Insurance

Negligent apartment "fixed" leak by balancing a large bucket on a beam which crashed through my bedroom ceiling. (CA) When I got home from work last night I noticed my ceiling had leaked in the bedroom and there was a small hole. I submitted a maintenance request right away but because the office was closed, it was not received. It had been raining for a few days and still was raining, but the leak was minor so I put a container and towel under it and left it until the morning. Then at 3am this morning I woke up to a loud crash and then was splashed with gallons of freezing cold, stinking feted water. A 5 gallon bucket full of water had fallen through my ceiling. After I finished having a heart attack I inspected the hole (which is large enough for me to fit through without touching the edges) and found that someone had balanced a bucket on a beam under a leak in the roof instead of actually fixing it. I should note that this beam supports a main electrical line and the main fire suppression system. This tells me that they new about the leak for a long time, long enough to fill up a bucket with rain water, probably since before I even moved in (about 16 months ago) and rather than fixing it, they put a bucket up there. There was even a small length of board cut to the diameter of the bucket to help balance it. Seems like a lot of effort to NOT fix something. If this thing had fallen on me, it could have killed me. The Carpet is ruined and stinking and it ruined a number of books and my childhood School year books. I took pictures of the damage and called the emergency maintenance number. They said they would deal with it in the morning and denied knowing about the leak and that the bucket was up there on purpose. I'm not so worried about the damage, what really gets me is the negligence and I no longer consider the place safe. What other ticking time bombs are there in this joint? In the morning I plan to contact the property manager and demand a full inspection. What are my options? Should I lawyer up? I want out of here. Can I get out of my lease without getting wrung out? Should I demand they house me somewhere in the mean time? Shouldn't I report this to the city or something? I'm not sure what my next steps should be. All advice is much appreciated. Thanks! Edit: Thank you all so much for the info and advice! This got a lot more attention than I expected. As most of you advised I contacted the city code enforcement and a full inspection of the property has been scheduled. Knowing which codes to cite really made a difference and the Landlord is now taking this very seriously and is being very reasonable and accommodating. It appears the apartment maintenance crew are the corner cutters. The management has taken full responsibility. I documented everything as well as I could and made a claim on my insurance. Thanks again! I will post an update if anything goes wrong or if something else falls through my ceiling. Edit 2: [Pics](https://imgur.com/gallery/hae0DSG) cause it did happen.

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  "title": "Negligent apartment \"fixed\" leak by balancing a large bucket on a beam which crashed through my bedroom ceiling. (CA)",
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