Volunteers Helping Woman Overcome Hoarding In Idaho Falls

There are people in the world who hoard things. They stuff their homes with debris, unable to throw away anything.

The Idaho Falls Fire Marshall ran into this exact situation early this year, and he has spent thousands of hours organizing volunteers to clean and gut the hoarder's house.

Ken Anderson was contacted by the Planning and Zoning Department about a homeowner who was breaking a lot of city ordinances. When he arrived at the home, he asked the homeowner if she could open the door.

"So, I asked her, I said, 'Can you open this door?'" said Anderson. "And she said 'no.' And I asked if it was because she couldn't or wouldn't." And she said, there's too much stuff behind the door."

Anderson then asked the 62-year-old woman how she got into her own house. "There was a small hole in the back door," said Anderson. "And you could see debris spilling out of the hole. And that's how she got into the house. She crawled through the hole and up the debris pile inside the home."

Anderson followed her, and found debris stacked wall to wall, five feet high. The Fire Marshall believed the house was a fire danger, and he posted it as uninhabitable. The homeowner was required to move out..." More & video