NBN Co. installed the box inside the Duffy’s house on April 29. Four days later, May 3, Mrs Duffy entered her downstairs laundry and was confronted with water rushing into the room.

Mrs Duffy described the scene as a “horror,” as she was unable to source where the water was coming from. 

“I yelled out to my husband, ‘get down here quickly, there is water running everywhere’,” Mrs Duffy said.

She contacted NBN Co. immediately to report the issue.

“[NBN] asked me to explain what had happened and when I had explained what had happened he asked me to go out and see if it was a Telstra pit or an NBN pit,” Mrs Duffy said.

The concrete lid of the pit is marked with a Telstra logo. The person on the phone told Mrs Duffy she would need to ring Telstra as it was not NBN’s “responsibility”. 

“I rang Telstra and told them all about it, I said the NBN was connected on Friday and he said ‘well that is their fault, you need to ring them’, so I just hung up because I was that frustrated.”

Feeling panicked by the ordeal, Mrs Duffy contacted her son, Kevin, to help her and her husband.

Kevin attempted to collect the water but was unsuccessful, so he plugged the drain leading into the house. 

He was forced to dig a trench in the nature strip to prevent water from the pit flowing into the house. 

The Examiner contacted NBN Co. and Telstra on Wednesday and was told the flooding would be investigated.

NBN Co’s corporate affairs manager, Russell Kelly, and a technical crew attended the site on Thursday morning and installed drainage works to stop any further water entering the property. 

“As a result of going out there [Thursday] we have more information but we still don’t know the exact cause because of the number of parts of the system that has been involved,” Mr Kelly said.

A Telstra spokesman said Mrs Duffy would be kept updated on a timeline for the restoration of her service.​