July 19, 2009 journal, apartments abandoned leaving the tenants without running water or air-conditioning, garbage removal and most basic services here in town. It seems this is a municipal problem and a case for DHEC. Duke needs to be tamed still cutting off power. City should not cut off water to apartments when the landlord is the one paying water bill. Many of these residents are paid up on their rent but I am sure there are some delinquent in these times. What you are seeing is a pattern of collapse developing as infrastructure falls apart. This landlord is likely never to return because his payments probably far out do his income on the property. Nobody wants a money-losing proposition to subsidize. The City of Pickens extended the apartment's water for 30 days & picked up the garbage realizing after it was publicized that they have a responsibility to the people living there. I have for years argued with utilities like Duke Power and even the telephone company but they should know the conditions inside a home before they cut their service off. In this case this owner lives in Florida which is no excuse for not providing services to property. Abandoned property has now become a serious problem for cities all across this country. Another apartment building at Travelers Rest is now reported to be out of running water. A national story coming out of NBC New York of a SUV that turned over in Milwaukee catching on fire with a mother and two children on board that were trapped strapped in. I fear SUVs because of their top heaviness and history of rollovers of being gas-guzzlers'. In this case 2 off-duty firefighters went through the front windshield to the back seat and freed the 2 children by cutting the seat belts with a knife although one is critically ill with burns at four years old. Every car needs a sharp knife in a certain place to cut seatbelts. I saw a light at Office Depot just what I needed but they would not sell it to me because it was their display and they had no inventory in cartons. I predict Office Depot will be no more because of poor management and because they still price many things with mail in rebates which I refuse to buy because I have been burned too many times in bad rebates. Stores still offering mail in rebates are probably behind times on inventory products also. I refuse to take the time to fill out any more mail in rebates and wait forever to be paid. So CIT got by Friday without bankruptcy but they are not out of the woods yet. I know the factoring business, I am sure they will collapse internally within a number of months. The trouble is that their clients cannot pay their money back and they will collapse also. Small business stores are folding at a rapid rate almost as fast as chain stores are closing. With all this fuss about national health care it seems now that we actually have national health care. They only need to make health care available at what the insurance company and the government pays for it at about 20 percent of what is billed to the private patient. Cities are giving up pools & playgrounds but in many cases volunteers are picking them up where the governments drops them and are doing a much better job providing them. This country could self police at a much more efficient rate & disband local authorities. 6-14-17-18