A woman in my church actually came to me for help after having broken the handle of the church vacuum cleaner. I put it back together temporarily with duct tape--it's still useable even now as long as you're careful to hold it just right, which most people aren't. Now this woman had told me herself that she and her husband were decently well-off compared to most of the rest of us in the church (she put it much more tactfully than that of course, I don't actually think she was bragging.) So I just assumed she was going to offer to replace the vacuum. If I'd broken it, I would simply have attempted a more permanent & solid repair job, being a bit broke myself--I think that would have been OK too, if successful--but I assumed her solution would probably be to replace it.
Well, I heard nothing from her, nada--neither replacement nor repair--and we all continued to take turns vacuuming the nursery and Sunday School rooms with a broken vacuum until the elders replaced it (with a pricier one that turned out to be horrible, of course. I still use the broken one by preference!) She left the church a few months later for greener pastures that agreed with her on important issues like Christmas being a pagan holiday we actually shouldn't be celebrating. (!) I always regretted that I hadn't followed through on my impulse to approach her a couple weeks after the incident and ask "So, when are you planning on doing something about the vacuum?" in a friendly voice that assumed that naturally she was planning to do the right thing. If a similar situation ever arises again, that's what I'm going to do. When you break something that isn't yours it is absolutely your job to do something about it, and people know that. They're usually trying to avoid or ignore the knowledge... so a reminder is (I think) usually powerful enough to do the job.
In your story, OP... well, I don't know what the repercussions to your job would have been if you'd said "So, ma'am, what are you going to do about this?" But I think that, those considerations aside, it would have been a perfectly OK thing to do. (It's also a phrasing that puts it on an ethical basis of "you know you should" rather than one of legal requirement, which I think is important.) I agree with NyaChan that she probably hurried away to avoid that very thing.