Photos by Sam Dean | The Roanoke Times

Robyn Whorley has been living in a hotel for more than six months because, a lawsuit says, about 100 gallons of heating oil were pumped into her home.

Robyn Whorley looks into her basement, into which some 100 gallons of heating oil were mistakenly pumped . The walls were removed and the fabrics deodorized, but she says a smell remains in the house.

Robyn Whorley is suing an oil company and a heating and air conditioning installer for $500,000. In the suit, she claims that her house is "uninhabitable, unsafe and unsuitable as a dwelling."

LYNCHBURG -- Robyn Whorley says her house still stinks.

Because of that, the Bedford County woman has been living out of an extended-stay hotel in Lynchburg for more than six months. Her stay has been paid for by a regional oil company that she's suing.

Meanwhile, nearly seven months after Christmas, the ornaments and decorations from the family's tree sit on the floor in the living room of her abandoned home on Windy Ridge Drive.

The company has paid for Whorley's hotel stay, she said, because on Dec. 27, one of the company's employees mistakenly pumped more than 100 gallons of heating oil directly into the partially finished basement of Whorley's brick ranch home. Months before, Whorley said, she'd informed the JC Nichols company -- a division of the Davenport Energy Co. -- that she was discontinuing her oil service, and her tank was then removed.

Since the December accident, the oil has been cleaned up, and the state Department of Environmental Quality has analyzed air samples taken from Whorley's house in May and June to test for lingering petroleum vapors. The tests were negative, said Donald Edge of the DEQ's regional office in Roanoke. The extremely sensitive vapor analysis, which tests in parts per trillion, would detect even the slightest odor, he said.

"I have been in the house numerous times. With the exception of early on ... there were no petroleum odors noted," Edge said.

Whorley doesn't agree. She recently sued Davenport Energy and a heating and cooling company she said is also involved. The suit, which seeks $500,000 in damages, claims the house is "uninhabitable, unsafe and unsuitable as a dwelling."

The pungent petroleum odor and damage to the interior walls and the basement's contents caused Whorley and her college-aged children to vacate the residence immediately, she said. Furniture, clothing, photographs and childhood mementos belonging to Whorley and her family are ruined, permeated by the unpleasant odor, she said.

"In the beginning I used to go into the house and sob just to know their things smelled. They stink," said Whorley, a guidance counselor at Amherst County High School.

Davenport Oil owner Ben Davenport referred questions about the situation to two company executives who did not return phone messages this week.

Whorley told her side of the story in interviews at her hotel room and at her house last week.

According to Whorley and details in the lawsuit, an employee of JC Nichols pumped the oil in December through an exterior fill pipe that flowed into her basement -- thinking it was still linked to a tank.

Eight months before, Whorley had hired Sweet's Heating & Air Conditioning of Moneta to remove the oil tank that was in her home and to install a heat pump. Sweet's is the second defendant named in the lawsuit, which asserts the company failed to "render inoperable" the exterior fill pipe to the oil tank when the tank was removed.

When the oil was dumped directly into the basement of Whorley's home, most of it eventually went into a drain that releases into the county's public sewer system, Edge said. A truck equipped with a vacuum was able to extract the oil from a sewer station near Whorley's home before it could contaminate the county's sewer infrastructure, he said.

Whorley's basement floor was resealed, but the epoxy has bubbled near the drain, which her attorney, Sam Patel, said is an indication the problem is not resolved.

Some interior walls in the basement were removed, the duct work was cleaned professionally and all fabric surfaces, such as rugs, furniture and window treatments, were cleaned and deodorized, Edge said.

But Whorley and Patel said the house still has an odor that has seeped into her Longaberger baskets, Pampered Chef stone cookware and the rest of the family's belongings.

Problems like Whorley's are not all that uncommon. Edge said botched heating oil deliveries occur once or twice a year in the 12-county region his office covers.

A similar case involving Virginia Bradley, who sued after 150 gallons of oil were pumped into the basement of her Northeast Roanoke home, took more than seven years to settle. The terms of that settlement are confidential, but Bradley initially sought $1 million in damages.

One-room living is lonely for Whorley, she said. Most nights she orders takeout because she said there are not many healthy meals she can cook on a two-burner stove with no oven.

Her potted plants line the window sill, the few clothes she has purchased since moving into the hotel fill the hanging rack and her own coffee-maker sits in the kitchenette.

Whorley puts her own pillows, sheets and blankets on the bed because she prefers those over the hotel's linens. She does not use the hotel's maid service -- she cleans her own room. That's the way she wants it.

She said she sometimes tidies the hotel's laundry area before she uses it, wiping up detergent drips, picking up forgotten dryer sheets and cleaning up the red clay remnants that construction workers' clothes leave in the washing machine.

When she wants to be outdoors she walks at nearby Liberty University or takes a foldout chair to sit in the hotel's picnic area, which is a small spot adjacent to the parking lot.

Beyond the blacktop there is a picnic table, a charcoal grill and a marked receptacle for doggy doo -- not exactly as peaceful as her own Bedford County back yard.

She still pays the mortgage on her home, which prevents her from being able to afford something else, she said. Whorley's parents, who live in Lynchburg, are renovating their basement to add a bedroom for her.

"It is almost complete. Soon I will have a place to go," she said.