out of control hoarding. >> you think, wow, why am i doing this? i need to stop. >> leaves a mother and daughter overwhelmed. stressful this is hoarding. >> a real estate investor finds a real steal. >> there was no way anyone could live in the house. >> and gets more than he bargained for. >> you couldn't walk around. huh to climb over it. >> a race against the clock. >> turned out to be 700 cats on the property. >> to save hundreds of lives. >> they were really, really sick and really malnourished. >> and when the experts step in -- >> a stinking rotten mess. >> -- even they can't believe

their eyes. >> what i saw would make anybody want to vomit. "caught on camera" -- hoarding. hello. i'm contessa brewer. welcome to "caught on camera." if you are like me from time to time you look around your home maybe dirty dishe in the sink, a pile of laundry on the floor or a big stack of papers on the counter. eventually most of us clean, fold and file our way back to at least presentable. but for hoarders clutter crosses a line from untidy to out of control. and the mess becomes a monster taking over their lives. from the outside it looks like a typical home in an ordinary suburban neighborhood. but go inside and you'll witness

a shocking sight. rooms stuffed to the rafters with clutter and debris. >> it's very, very chaotic and stressful. >> in california 27-year-old jessica, who asked that her last name not be revealed, lives with her mother, an admitted hoarder. >> i would describe it as bad. it's not an environment that's comfortable to be in. >> after living on her own for more than a year, jessica moves back home to save money and help her mom with her worsening condition. the transition to such deplorable conditions takes a toll. >> it's been very difficult. i grew very accustomed to having kind of a minimalistic existence in my apartment. not having a lot of stuff. and being able to clean my apartment from top to bottom in maybe an hour and a half, where cleaning everything could take days or weeks or it's not an easy process. you don't have control over where you can move stuff or what you do with stuff or what stuff stays and what stuff goes.

so it's been stressful. >> dr. samantha morrison, a licensed psychologist, specializes in compulsive hoarding. >> by definition it includes three components. there's the acquisition or failure to discard a large number of possessions. an inability to use your home for its intended purposes due to the clutter. the third part of it is significant distress or impairment in your life. >> jessica gives our cameras a revealing look inside the house and mind of a hoarder. >> this is the entryway to my mother's house. in this room is antique lamps, boxes of blankets and sleeping bags that have been there for over a year and boxes upon boxes of books. coloring books, academic books, journals, all sort of electronics, workout gear, a piano and all sorts of antiques and tvs. this room is intended to be my mother's office at some point. office supplies, her paper, her printers.

she needed a place to put it and this is where it fit. but for the most part it's all office supplies or meant to be in her office. >> this is the pink room. originally it was my niece's in it are her bed, toys, clothes and my mother has filled it with soft textured items. blanket, jacket, comforters, clothes, pom poms and still my niece's toys as well as other things that she's bought for my niece to play with. it's pink because that was the color my niece picked for the room when she was a little girl. at one point this room was completely cleaned and it was used as bedroom, solely as a bedroom and a play room. this was my room for 25 years. and it was always kept clean. and after i moved out, my sister moved in and after she moved out, the hoard moved in. it started off with stuff in the middle. i don't even know what that stuff was, but it was added on to. this room has become a

catch-all. and it's just stuff that doesn't have a home, that she can't figure out what she wants to do with comes here. and it's like a tomb enshrining the hoard. it just sits here. a lot of the boxes she moved from other places in here. she'll take stuff out and she'll put stuff back in. >> and among the stuff, 11 cats have free rein of the house. >> they're fuzzy pets, they leave hair, and they scratch on things and that leaves bits. it adds up quickly to equaling a big mess. if it's not kept on top of constantly, it can very easily get out of hand. she bonds with them, she develops a relationship with them. and i think that that does contribute to the hoarding because then it attaches an extreme value to the pet. greater than most people would attach to the pet. so it makes it harder to part with them. but she doesn't go out and actively seek them and bring them in. >> she finds the conditions so

intolerable she seeks refuge in an isolated bedroom in the home. >> it's at the far end of the house. i've separated myself off from the house with a heavy duty shower curtain and baby gate to keep the barrier between myself and the rest of the house. i keep everything in my room now, all my personal belongings because if i leave them out they'll get destroyed and destroyed very quickly. either stuff will get put on top of it and it will get crushed. her pets might get hold of it or destroy it. things will get dirty. >> the pets also contribute to something that isn't caught on camera. a smothering, noxious odor permeates most of the home. the overwhelming smell of ammonia from cat urine combined with pet hair makes breathing difficult. unlike other areas, the air in jessica's room is much cleaner. >> it doesn't hurt to breathe in this room. your eyes don't burn. your nostrils don't burn, your throat doesn't suddenly hurt. you don't feel like someone's sitting on your chest.

>> with the house in such disorder, jessica finds day-to-day life mentally draining and physically exhausting. >> it takes ten times more work and effort to do simple things to take a shower, you have to get all your stuff from your bedroom, make sure you have your flip flops on, step over your baby gate, walk to the other end of the house. i don't walk around barefoot. i don't want stuff on my feet. it just flat-out grosses me out. to cook anything, i have to go to my fridge in my room, get everything i needed, get all my utensils and bring it into the kitchen to prepare my food, then clean it and take it all back to my room. to sweep and mop, i have to do a quarter to a third of a room at a time. i have to move everything away from where i want to mop, which can take 45 minutes to an hour sometimes. mop, wait for it to dry, put it all back and then do the next section. it's very exhausting and very stressful.

>> to an outsider, the solution seems easy, clean it up. but with a hoarder, it's just not that simple. >> you don't move stuff. she would be very hurt, first of all, she'd be angry, she'd be hurt at the disrespect to her and her things. she'd be ashamed. it would be kind of like her worst fears coming true right then and there. it would just make the problem worse because it would make her more defensive of everything else. and would make her fight harder to keep it. >> dr. morrison has not treated jessica's mother but has dealt with many similar cases. >> if you were to go into the home of someone who hoards and you were to clean out everything, not only would that make the person incredibly vulnerable and distressed but it would not solve the problem. but the person would reclutter and rehoard. the first step is to have them get the motivation to want this.

unmovable piles, jessica worries about the future. >> just walking through the house and seeing everything that's here and wondering is she going to be able to conquer this? is she going to get through this or am i going to be stuck with this one day? is this going to be her legacy. >> coming up, jessica's mother in her own words. >> it's daunting. and you think i need to go through this, it will take have known someone who's lived well into their 90s. and that's a great thing. but even though we're living longer, one thing that hasn't changed: the official retirement age. ♪ the question is how do you make sure you have the money you need to enjoy all of these years. ♪ my patients don't know which one to use. i tell them to use the brand i use.

oral-b -- the brush originally created by a dentist. trust the brand more dentists and hygienists use. oral-b. the day building a play set begins with a surprise twinge of back pain... and a choice. take up to 4 advil in a day or 2 aleve for all day relief. [ male announcer ] that's handy. ♪ lookin' good, flo! feelin' good! feelin' real good! [ engine revs ] boat protection people love. now, that's progressive. call or click today. i love to golf. ♪

[ grunts ] yowza! that's why i eat belvita at breakfast. it's made with delicious ingredients and carefully baked to release steady energy that lasts... we are golfing now, buddy! [ grunts ] ...all morning long. i got it! for the win! uno mas! getting closer! belvita breakfast biscuits -- steady energy to do what i do all morning long.

27-year-old jessica lives >> it started with newspapers and it grew from there, from newspapers to books an maybe books it went from baskets or from baskets it went to candles. we started having collections of thing. it's like the flavor of the

month. >> yes and can hardly remember a time when the house was in order. >> some of my earlierest memories we would be getting yelled at because she couldn't find it and she thought we moved it or threw it away, having this huge fight or tantrum because she misplaced something and her later finding it. >> at the time i didn't have a clue. okay. i need to do something. >> because her condition is not widely known, jessica's moth prefers not to reveal her identity. >> i guess it'ses not the characteristic i want to be known for. >> working with children jessica's mother also has concerns how her hoarding might affect her career in education. >> it's very important for me to be professional in my job capacity and when i meet with the clients or i meet with the other educators, that's what i want them to take away and think that, oaks, she's very professional she dausz a good

job. not, oh my god, have you seen that? jessica's mother shez her hoarding tendencies can be traced back to her college years. but it isn't until the sudden death of her husband in 2001 that a tendency becomes a come pugs. >> i went over the edge. >> you do the grief counseling. sometimes it doesn't help. what i found was i would go to work and come home and just want to ka coop myself. i didn't want to deal with anything. >> in the cases of somebody, a spouse passing away, you have two complicated issues because now you're more alone, you're more isolated and you fill things up with stuff. a lot of times people with compulsive hoarding don't trust their memory so they're afraid they're going to lose whatever association they had to the individual they lost. >> early effort to seek help from psychiatrists are uncan he feel successful. >> i never had the feeling that they really grasped what i was

trying to say than they really understood. and it was really futile. thousands of dollars for nothing. and you realize, well this person is not helping me, so you go to next one, they're not helping me and you go to someone else and they're not helping me. eventually it come to the point i can spend time finding who is the right person or i can call it quits and trying doing it on my own. it's extremely difficult. it's overwhelming. the anxiety is overwell ming. >> jessica has been unable to secure long term professional counseling for her mom. >> a lot of them don't want to come to our house. they don't want to see firsthand. they don't want to get in there, get their hands dirty in the sense of while they're throwing this tan tum, talking to them and addressing what is causing

this and that seems to be the biggest problem we've had with finding help. >> but without immediate answers, the hoarding can'ts. >> part of it and the feeling you fight against is the idea that, okay, this is mine, i bought this, i have the control over it and now somebody is telling me that i need to get rid of this and i need to let go. so it becomes an issue more of control than perhaps emotional attachment. >> i think it's just the issue of letting it go. i think she feels that when he lets it go she loses a little bit of control over the item. she doesn't realize the control she has to let it go is much greater. >> for years the hoarding strains jessica's relationship with her mother. but more recently the two commit to tackling the problem together without professional help. >> it was you have an issue and you need help. no i don't. i'm perfectly fine. no you really have a problem and you really need help. once she got there and admitted this was a huge step and breath of relief.

okay, she understands in is an issue. now we have to get on the road to addressing this and fix this behavior and mentality and pushing her when he doesn't want to go anymore. >> jessica acknowledges progress has been made but there's still a long way to go. >> this is probably 75% of what it was about a year ago. used to be completely filled with boxes that were up to your waist and they went higher as they went back. >> i'm not sure i would have made as much progress as i have. i think it would have been much easier to side step it and find something else that was less distasteful to do and not as difficult. this is very difficult process. so if it were just me by myself, there wouldn't be as much progress. >> despite her mother's recent efforts to change her life, the hoarding has had an effect on jessica. >> i started seeing reactions any myself that i couldn't understand. i was constantly throwing things

of my own away and purging my own belongs, stuff i probably would have liked to have kept. there has to be other people out here. there has to be someone who is talking about this. jessica finds great comfort online. she's an active member for the not for profit organization children of hoarders and corresponds with others for support. >> even just reading about other people's experience, what they're experiencing if i can't relate, offering my own support you can get through this, it will be okay. >> as the cleanup continues jessica remains hopeful. >> i think she can get it down to that point where it's a little bit safer for her. that's what is the best i can ask for, i guess. >> they have to want to learn to think differently, how to change their behaviors, understand their pathology. and so motivation and getting them to recognize the cost of

their hoarding is probable the first step in getting them well. >> it was not like this but it's daunting and you think okay i need to go through all this, oh my good, it's going to take forever. will i live that long? i really would rather not have to do this today. i would rather have a root canal. but at the same time you're looking around and you're look, well if i don't it's never going to change. you got to do something to make it happen. you have to be proactive and remember your goal. the american dream is of a better future, a confident retirement. those dreams have taken a beating lately. but no way we're going to let them die. ♪ ameriprise advisors can help keep your dreams alive like they helped millions of others. by listening. planning. working one on one.

that's what ameriprise financial does. and that's what they can do with you. that's how ameriprise puts more within reach. ♪

how sharp is your businesss more security?o!ach. can it help protect your people and property, while keeping out threats to your operations? it's not working! yes it is. welcome to tyco integrated security. with world-class monitoring centers and thousands of qualified technicians. we've got a personal passion to help your business run safer, smarter, and sharper. we are tyco integrated security. and we are sharper.

>> do you want to see hoarding? you're going to see it. october 2010 in bloom field wisconsin, rich shafr purchases a home in foreclosure in a

remote lake front community. >> it's a bunch of cottages that got converted into homes kind of in the middle of nowhere. >> not much is known for the previous owner but for sha fer the price is right. >> i've seen people save things and collect thing but i think this this case the individual was cleaning the neighborhood, so to speak. >> armed with a video camera to document the scene, sha fer viszs the property. you want to see hoarding, you're going to see it. >> looked like a typical house that had fle glekt. the neighbors had put up a fence on one side. the trees were overgrown, the bushes. there was a car parked outside. it was completely packed with stuff that was overflow from the house an basically when you opened up the door of the car, the car was filled to the ceiling. they shut the door and locked it and then i'm sure if you were to

open it, all the stuff would fall out. >> looked like stuff you would find digging through garbage. there was a note saying this is my stuff, do not take it. it's not garbage. it's my stuff. >> with the camera still rolling, the group heads into the neglected home to assess the damage. >> different places in the house had different things. when you initially walked in it was a breezeway and that area had laundry bottles, things like that. >> i've never seen anything like it in my entire life, this much stuff in such a confined space was mind boggling. >> it was full of debris up to the ceiling just about, actually bags and bags of stuff, dishes, mail, everything you could imagine. as you moved into the kitchen, the kitchen was stacked with dishes, cooking utensils, pots an pans. >> the nasest had to be the

kitchen because there were a bunch of plates, they were used, not washed and they were stacked up, spoons and forks and pots and pans that were used and not washed. >> at one point during the survey lane loses sight of his friend rick. >> where are you at? over here. >> we didn't see him because she was standing behind where the kitchen table would have been. i think the table was underneath all that stuff. it was up to the ceiling. i've never seen anything like that before. >> let's move to the living room. >> i think the worst room was the front room. that was the biggest room and that's the one that had the most stuff in it. piled high to the ceiling. you had to walk across probably two or three feet up in the air to get to the other rooms. it was just stacked ungodly amount of stuff just stacked in the living room. >> let's try to get to the bedrooms. >> as you moofd into the hallway in the bedroom, same way. it was pretty much len

physicians, blankets. >> it was hilly. >> there's the other bedrooms. >> when you looked at the doorway, the top of the doorway is where you would smash your face on. the bree was three feet from the doorway which is roughly 4 1/2 feet. at some places wit us higher. couldn't see out any of the windows. clean clothes and she would pack them away so it wasn't, you know, just garbage. >> there's the top of the door. >> i got a little bit of clearance. >> to put that much stuff in there, she had been doing it for many years. it was kind of sad. you got a sad feeling that somebody was living like this. >> i take it to the bathroom here. yeah, that was the bathroom. >> the bathroom was completely filled with bags of stuff. so it wasn't usable. you could tell that he had just finally abandoned the house and just was using it for storage now because there was no way

that no one could live in the house. >> no way shape or form was it livable. >> if you have an entire house amast with stiff from wall to wall, where do you even begin to. so what a lot of times happens is they sort of throw their handz up, they feel hopeless, overwhelmed, both anxious and depressed. >> this is hoarding. >> the removal of clothes and debris takes sha fer one month to complete. >> i think i filled over 500 garbage bag to the top, the biggest bags that they make. i don't know how one guy could do all this. it looked like you needed a crew of people to go in there and do it. i actually rented it four months after i bought it. >> i was happy with the results. i've always had to keep my eye on her...

but, i didn't always watch out for myself. with so much noise about health care... i tuned it all out. with unitedhealthcare, i get information that matters... my individual health profile. not random statistics. they even reward me for addressing my health risks. so i'm doing fine... but she's still going to give me a heart attack. we're more than 78,000 people looking out for more than 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. with the innovating and the transforming and the revolutionizing. it's enough to make you forget that you're flying five hundred miles an hour on a chair that just became a bed. you see, we're doing some changing of our own. ah, we can talk about it later. we're putting the wonder back into air travel, one innovation at a time. the new american is arriving.

from capital one... boris earns unlimited rewards for his small business. can i get the smith contract, please? thank you. that's three new paper shredders. [ boris ] put 'em on my spark card. [ garth ] boris' small business earns 2% cash back on every purchase every day. great businesses deserve unlimited rewards. read back the chicken's testimony, please. "buk, buk, bukka!" [ male announcer ] get the spark business card from capital one and earn unlimited rewards. choose 2% cash back or double miles on every purchase every day. told you i'd get half.

welcome back to "caught on camera." i'm contessa brewer. many of us are blessed to have a furry little friend in our lives. cats and dogs cannot only be our pets but members of our family. but for an animal hoarder, what starts off as caring for a few pets becomes overwhelming. a warning -- you might find what you are about to see disturbing.

in florida, neighbors call police to complain about their neighbor's out of control hoarding. but authorities say it isn't clutter that they find. >> turned out to be 700 cats on the property. >> he's director of animal cruelty investigations of the humane society of the united states. and works closely with law enforcement to investigate reports of animal cruelty and neglect. >> we get a lot of animal hoarding calls. it's our number one call. oftentimes they fail to spay and neuter. the other scenario is folks who sort of started out trying to rescue animals and they've just sort of lost the ability or never had the ability to sort of determine what's an appropriate number of animals for them to have. >> whatever the reason for hoarding, the effects on the animals are devastating. >> the number one thing that we see in these cases is a real failure to provide proper veterinary care.

when there's so many animals and not enough people to care for them, what happens is they may be providing sort of the basics of food and water to some extent, but they don't have the ability really to go through and monitor the population. you see injuries that have not been treated properly, that have either gotten infected or healed improperly. you often see disease from overcrowding. >> people with animal hoarding tend to want to be caregivers. they may get a sense of the animals needing them so that's how they derive pressure from it. they take in more and more and more at at that point's how do i get rid of this. >> so when animal control in florida calls with an out of control cant satch rare in 2007, he heads out with a video camera to video the scene. when you initially drive up you have no idea of the situation.

it wasn't until we started walking through the property and there was a plarj area off the main house that was sort of the isolation ward, just had cages and cages of very sick cats. there was a large barn that had cages and cages of cats. there were pens with cats in them. trailer with cats. when you come around the other side of the house there's other pens of cats. departmenty of investigation and field responder join him on the rescue. >> anyone that looks at a situation like that would almost immediately wonder how somebody could care for that many animals. your immediate thought was oh my gosh, there were a lot of animals here. >> they were in every kind of device you could put an animal in. >> there was quite overwhelming, the smell. >> the human society puts together a plan to deal with hundreds of fee lines.

>> once we got over the initial shock of the number of cats we were going to have to remove from the property, we divide the property up into different zones and we split into three times. essentially i would assign each team an area, when they finished that area i would assign them the next area. >> we had everybody spread out and the moment somebody saw that cat they would yell and we would call come up and get it cornered, then everybody with a net, as soon as she started to run, you could swing the net and collect him safely. >> after two days, the team returns to the house. >> we took everybody in there with nets and essentially caught all of the cats, chased them around until we caught them all. >> the cat's medical conditions are checked and some are in gave condition. >> they were really sick and really man nourished, awe r a lot of them. most of them lacked basic care. it was apalg. >> every kind of virus that you

would imagine one cat with its entire lip missing, there were cats that were blind, there were cats thatted that to have their eyes removed because their infection got so bad. >> the human society rents two white houses to tret the sick and injured cats. >> we had 26 people a kay to take care of the cats. that was kind of sweet, they were so excited for some companionship, that we would go into the pens an they would walk up to us and nuzzle us and want to be loved. >> sadly nearly 100 rescued cats do not survive the neglect but many do find a happier home. >> we did a large adoption event, adopted out 258 and the rest we've slowly replaced. >> at a result of the investigation, two people are charged with counts of animal cruelty and sentenced to 15 years of probation. they have to pay a total of more

than $636,000 to the human society and are barred from contact with cats. for the human society, another shocking case of animal hoarding, this time in gordan, alabama. more than 200 animals are rescued from deplorable conditions. >> it was 27 acres and there were a number of homes on the property, a number of folk ons the property but each of these folks had upward of ten animals. >> if you didn't know it was there, you wouldn't know it was there. it was one of the placings that was in the back and then -- >> many of the dogs were kept in pens an then a lot of them were just chained on the property. and there was an unbelievable amount of trash and debris all

over the property. a little trail to go through the trailer. very, you know strong odor in there of urine and fee cease. the animals, we started climbing over piles of debris, the dogs were heart worm positive an many as heart worm that had advanced to such a severe stage they were suffering from heart failure. >> a team of 20 people examines and documents each animal. >> there were a lot of dogs that were really afraid. you can imagine they probably spent a lot of their lives chained up on the property without any real human interaction which is what we see a lot on the hoarding cases. >> almost 230 animals are removed but despite the team's efforts, not all survive. >> there were several that were so severely advanced if their heart worm or heart failure that they could not sustain the treatment and did have to be youth niezed. but the majority of the animals

we were able to place. >> two residents of the property are charged with animal cruelty, both pled guilty and receive two years of probation. >> both of the women were in denial with the situation of the animals and they really felt they were preparing the best care for the animals. >> while deliver many of the animals to the centers, one german shepherd catches his eye. >> i couldn't do it. i fell for my own thing, i ended uptaking her home. she is heart worm free. they want to take in the defenseless animal. be an advocate for these creatures who can't advocate for themselves. [ mom ] with my little girl, every food is finger food.

so i can't afford to have germy surfaces. but after one day's use, dishcloths can redeposit millions of germs. so ditch your dishcloth and switch to a fresh sheet of new bounty duratowel. look! a fresh sheet of bounty duratowel leaves this surface cleaner than a germy dishcloth, as this black light reveals. it's durable, cloth-like and it's 3 times cleaner. so ditch your dishcloth and switch to new bounty duratowel. the durable, cloth-like picker-upper. ♪ the middle of this special moment and i need to run off to the bathroom. ♪ i'm fed up with always having to put my bladder's needs ahead of my daughter. ♪ so today, i'm finally talking to my doctor about overactive bladder symptoms. [ female announcer ] know that gotta go feeling?

ask your doctor about prescription toviaz. one toviaz pill a day significantly reduces sudden urges and accidents, for 24 hours. if you have certain stomach problems or glaucoma, or can not empty your bladder, you should not take toviaz. get emergency medical help right away if your face, lips, throat or tongue swells. toviaz can cause blurred vision, dizziness, drowsiness and decreased sweating. do not drive, operate machinery or do unsafe tasks until you know how toviaz affects you. the most common side effects are dry mouth and constipation. talk to your doctor about toviaz.

>> for more than 30 years ron has observed disaster masers a full service crisis management business he now runs with his

wife melissa. among other services disaster masters offers assistance with severely cluttered homes. >> we know that we can help those people. >> ron and i are both project managers. we go in and help people that are living in unsafe and unhappy and unhealthy conditions. >> but according to ron, disaster masters services are only available to those who make the call themselves, to take their own first step toward recovery from excessive hoarding. >> the first question i ask them is are you calling for yourself or somebody else. 70% of the phone calls i get are third parties trying to fix somebody. those people i say, sorry, can't help you. i can't help somebody that's not interested in helping themselves. >> when a call comes in in 2010 from a school teacher needing help in staten island, new york, they head out for an assessment. with video camera in hand to document the case. but he assured all his clients that their identities will remain confidential. >> you couldn't open the door 90

degrees, maybe 30. this lady had a hard time getting into her own door. as soon as you got in the door, it is stacked from the floor to the ceiling. >> i remember having a difficult time walking through the front door. and being amazed that she was in a wheelchair. and the first thing i thought was, how does she get in and out? >> the disaster masters make their way around the packed home to assess the severity of the problem. >> behind the door, up against the wall in the closet, still stacked to the ceiling and little paths back into the living room. kitchen in the back. you could barely walk into the kitchen. >> it was a mix of construction material like tiles, plaster, to repair walls, tools and things that she had recently purchased as gifts. >> just a complete mess. everything came home, nothing had a place. >> she had a sofa sleeper that

she was using because she could not walk up the stairs because she had just had knee surgery. and the whole second level was uninhabitable. turns out that all that construction material was because they had renovated a bathroom. so you go to the top of the stairs and on the left was this amazing bathroom. it was unfortunate that she could not even get up there to use it. you couldn't walk into the bedroom. and then the home office that was upstairs, that was over. i mean, it was full of office supplies. so it was just about safety and about her mobility issues. >> the job of painstakingly combing through and removing room after room of debris takes a five-person crew three days. >> everything in there that was a fire, health and a slipping hazard was gone. >> according to them, not only was the cleanup successful, but the school teacher has remained committed to maintaining order.

>> there were a few phone calls made following that. and as far as we know even today she's doing okay. >> for the disaster masters, another memorable case of severe clutter happens in april of 2007. a high level computer expert reaches out for help from a very exclusive neighborhood on manhattan's park avenue. >> this is a lady very sharp, highly educated. >> we were greeted downstairs. we were the first people to show up in about five years? and she was absolutely beyond embarrassed. she knew we had to go in. once we got in, a few minutes after, she broke down. she was just in tears. >> successful in the workplace, but behind closed doors at home, living in complete disarray. >> she lived in a very respectable high rent high rise building. and her house was a complete shambles. when you walked into the room and you were standing where the

bed was, you were standing on top of the bed, about two feet above it. >> this was a pizza box job. it was just trash. empty water bottles, pizza box, food containers. >> i see people talk about milk bottles in the same way that we're speaking about individuals or talking about a cat or a living creature. not all but some individuals truly believe that these objects have feelings and the loss that they would sustain in throwing away milk bottles is not that different than someone who is getting rid of a cat or a dog. >> the homeowner, whose identity is also being kept confidential, is not only looking for help with removal but also to locate a lost family treasure. >> we asked was there anything you're looking for. >> she says, oh, my god, yes, there is. >> i said what. >> i lost my mother's diamond

i found that. >> what's the odds of finding something like that in that mess. >> i'm 5'3" and it must have come up to my shoulder. a lot of times you see a path and there was no path. you didn't just walk in, you climbed in. it was an amazing amount of trash. >> because of the amount of debris, the living conditions are extremely dangerous. >> she was clearly in danger of having fire in that building. because when you live in a place like that, you have that kind of paper and you have all these extension cords underneath this stuff, one spark with a lot of dryness, it can very easily happen. >> the removal process takes a six-person team two days to complete. 100 large trash bags are filled to the brim and carted away. but not before the team make a miraculous discovery in the bedroom. >> we found the ring. >> it was in the middle of the floor and had a bunch of trash. >> i don't know who cried more, the staff member who found it, you know, this grown man. and then she starts crying, and the whole crew starts crying. it was amazing.

>> though not a trained mental health professional, he remains confident the home will remain clutter-free. >> what we do is we give them a new pattern of thinking so they don't buy anything unless they know where they're going to put it. they don't want to see me again. i don't want to see them again. i tell them flat out when we start, listen, i'm going to do this job once. i don't ever, ever want to come back and do this again. coming up -- a business executive faces eviction. and the disaster masters face their worst disaster ever. >> what i saw would make anybody want to vomit. carfirmation.

only hertz gives you a carfirmation. hey, this is challenger. i'll be waiting for you in stall 5. it confirms your reservation and the location your car is in, the moment you land. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz. that's not much, you think. except it's 2% every year. go to e-trade and find out how much our advice and guidance costs. spoiler alert: it's low. it's guidance on your terms, not ours. e-trade. less for us. more for you. by the armful? by the barrelful? the carful? how about...by the bowlful? campbell's soups give you nutrition, energy, and can help you keep a healthy weight. campbell's. it's amazing what soup can do. he opened up jake's very private world. at first, jake's family thought they saved ziggy,

but his connection with jake has been a lifesaver. for a love this strong, his family only feeds him iams. compared to other leading brands, it has 50% more animal protein... ...to help keep ziggy's body as strong as a love that reaches further than anyone's words. iams. keep love strong. i took something for my sinuses, but i still have this cough. [ male announcer ] a lot of sinus products don't treat cough. they don't? [ male announcer ] nope, but alka seltzer plus severe sinus does it treats your worst sinus symptoms, plus that annoying cough. [ breathes deeply ] ♪ oh, what a relief it is

a highly successful business executive living in an apartment filled with garbage, clothes and

computers. fearing eviction, he calls in the experts. the disaster masters. >> he felt that the landlord was about to create an action and eviction. he felt the pressure. >> 2005. they head out to survey the scene. >> he welcomed us in and really said the magic words that fix it people love to hear, like ron and myself, which is will you please help me? please help me. >> and what they find shocks even a team of experienced professionals. >> this place was one word -- abysmal. you had to push the door open with your shoulder to get it open. then you walked around sideways like this to slip in. just get in. and from there, there was virtually everything, food, clothing, stuff, everywhere. >> the debris in this case was a lot of trash, but also a lot of

computer parts. he loved tinkering on computers and taking them apart. >> just like everything. lunch containers, soda bottles, you name it. everything you can buy at the grocery store, you bring it home and it was all there. >> a lot of paperwork. people have a huge problem with what to do with paper. >> the crew begins carefully sifting through the debris room by room. >> we don't take the snow shovels and just haul the stuff into a trash can. we actually go through everything. we're going through those papers looking for stocks and bonds and photographs and birth certificates and things like that. >> the removal takes a seven-person crew three days to complete. >> we left him in really good shape. >> the cluttering client avoids eviction. and just months after the cleanup, they receive an unexpected call.

>> out of the blue has a conversation with ron and says, i want to call and thank you for saving my life. >> shortly after we did that project, he ended up in the hospital. and the reason was because he got a heart transplant. >> he said, if you had not taken me on as a client, if you would not have helped me, i would have died because i would have not been able to come home to recover. i would not have been able to walk into my apartment. so you really just saved my life twice. and he was just very, very grateful. >> a happy ending for the business executive, and another client, an ailing elderly man facing imminent eviction cries out for help. >> they had found him out and they moved to have protective services for adults evict. >> once in the apartment trk crew discovers why there's been such cause for alarm. >> when you walked in the door, all there was was books. i mean, tens of thousands of books. i don't know why the floor didn't collapse. from the floor up, taller than i

am on both sides. it just went up six, seven feet high. >> every single book in there was about philosophy, religion and health. there was nothing else there. >> the removal team winds their way through the literary maze. >> when you walk through this tunnel, down to the window and over on one side there was what may have been a sink. >> to clear the apartment, the crew hauls the books out into a bin on the curb, but over the course of five days, they notice not only isn't the pile growing, it's getting smaller. >> people on the street would go and take the books. so every time we showed up, it was kind of a joke. you know, how the dumpster would be less and less. >> a once hidden treasure of hard covers and paperbacks is

donated to dumpster diving book worms. 2006 in new jersey. the disaster masters encounter the worst conditions they've ever seen. >> a stinking, rotten mess. >> the house had been occupied by a reclusive mother and son. both in poor health. they left their home only after it was condemned by authorities. >> when you walked up to the steps, you saw a bunch of yellow tape because the town had just condemned the house. when that happens, you're quite apprehensive about what is behind that door? you could already smell it before we even opened the door. you had to wear the respirators. you would not have been able to breathe at all. we climbed around to try to make sense of what the contents were. you couldn't even recognize the kitchen. there was so much organic material. >> the team finds the living room by identifying the very top of the fireplace. and cannot believe what they're facing. >> the living room had this big recliner in it, and between the door and coming in to where the chair was is a pile of garbage. >> the whole living room was like a refrigerator from a horror flick.

it was just unimaginable. the organic material came up about as high as the arms of the recliner. it was so packed that you could actually in midday see the steam coming out from the methane gas from all the organic material. >> this stuff was rotting. all right? creating heat. >> what i saw would make anybody want to vomit. you didn't know if you were looking at a dead opossum or if you were looking at just old food. i mean, it was just unrecognizable. >> they realize that years of dropping food on to the floor had actually created a new higher floor. >> the heat like this and they watched the tb and when they're done, they throw this one there and that one that way. and it stacks up. >> it's so dense, so packed from, you know, layer, layers, layered, then you walk on it and you layer and you walk on it. it was like walking on a floor.

you could pound your fist on it. and you could break your wrist. it wasn't just that area. it was throughout the entire bottom floor. >> in the basement, busted water pipes create a stagnant pool of sludge. >> they had no heat. and as a result the pipes broke. >> we were wearing boots above the knees to get through that stuff because the paper and all the stuff, the clothing and things are absolutely disgusting. >> for 13 days, the team digs their way through the rotting garbage. hardened candle wax and stack of debris. in total, the crew fills five 20-foot-long dumpsters. >> i didn't think it was ever, ever going to get done ever. it was the longest job we've ever done. we recovered that house. the place got cleaned out completely. they put it on the market. we got there just in time. >> hoarding is a serious disorder that can leave many feeling hopeless and overwhelmed. but as we've seen, whether the issue is garbage, books or