Florida volunteers clean up stinking house

SUNRISE, Fla., Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Volunteers assisted in cleaning up an allegedly foul-smelling house in Sunrise, Fla., filling a 40-yard dumpster with rotting items, the helpers said.

The house of Debra Higgins, 55, smelled so bad that when a utilities worker went to the home in early October to collect on a bill, he thought someone was dead, The Miami Herald reported Sunday.

Police were called, who discovered Higgins, along with seven cats and two dogs.

Volunteers spent Saturday morning disposing of Higgins' furniture, debris, vegetation -- and a beehive containing an estimated 90,000 honeybees, Larry Sofield, Sunrise City commissioner, said.

Higgins had accrued more than $600,000 in fines for city code violations, which includes the presence on her property of a 40-foot ficus tree and a dead Norfolk pine. The city seeks a volunteer to cut those down, the Miami Herald reported.

No details on the other violations were provided.

Higgins will still owe on the fines, but more will not accumulate, the newspaper reported.

"The smell has started to go away. People will be able to be out in their front yard for a change," Kathy Curry, Higgins' neighbor, said.

"You help people out and good things come to you,'' William Daeder, 44, said, referring to the help he received in July when volunteers helped clean up the mess on his property that had led to $200,000 in fines.

But Daeder's neighbors said the cleanup had only a temporary effect because his yard is again a mess, the newspaper reported.