Wednesday, August 13, 2008

In which I compress 6 days of the most stressful days of my life into as few sentences as possible

The flood left Science Family homeless, but some wonderful friends let us invade their home, toddler, dog, cats and all.

The floors in our condo were a complete loss and had to be torn out in order to start drying the subflooring and the walls. Damage estimates for our unit are around $10,000. Water obeys the laws of gravity, so unfortunately the two downstairs units got it even worse than we did. The damage estimates for those units were around $15,000 each.

Initially the president of the homeowners association (a real piece of work named Bob) told Science Family that the flood damage would not be covered by the condos homeowners insurance because (according to him) I was negligent for leaving the house before the washing machine had finished its run. However, in the days that followed it became obvious that the policy probably would cover the damage... but Bob and other members of the board acted deliberately to try to keep Husband and I from getting information about the policy. In fact, they did several illegal things to try to prevent a claim from being filed.

With state law in hand, we finally forced the board (under threat of legal action) to file the claim with the insurance company. We got a claim number this morning. So a week later we're just now getting the process started.

Hopefully the insurance company will send an adjuster out soon, and hopefully the insurance company will agree that this should be a covered event. My major concern at this point is that without the support of the board (who are technically the policy holders), we are going to have to be sure that they don't have the ability to influence the insurance company's decision in any way.

It's going to be a long process, I suspect. But I'm pretty damn proud of the way I handled myself and stuck up for my family when the board was trying to bully us. I'm also amazed at how many people rushed to lend a hand when we found ourselves homeless. It takes a disaster sometimes to show you who your real friends are, and apparently we have many.

I'll return to more hilarious posting once my life is a little more stable. In the meantime, may I direct you to Dr. Isis? That's a good place for a laugh.

14 comments:

hgg said...

Good to hear that things look little better, but what a terrible thing to do by the board. Good luck with sorting things out!

Anonymous said...

Yay for true friends! Yay for finding more than you expected! Yay for the threat of legal action!

I know the last one isn't always so yay but it's amazing how people will do back flips when they hear the word "lawyer."

I hope everything gets resolved sooner rather than later.

ScienceGirl said...

Good luck with the insurance claim, and yay for good friends in need!

Aunt Becky said...

Good luck, my newfound friend. I'm sorry that you're going through this.

EcoGeoFemme said...

Oh, poor Science Family! What a nightmare.

I just can't understand why the other owners wouldn't want the insurance to pay. They can't possibly think you'd be able to cover $40000 in damages, can they? I mean, even if they don't want thier premiums to go up, they want to be able make repairs, right? What dicks.

The bean-mom said...

So glad to hear that your homeowners' insurance will probably cover the flood damage after all! And yes, BOO to the condo board jerks. And yay for true friends.

Anonymous said...

I was thinking the same thing as EcoGeoFemme - if it was just your unit damaged and it might make more sense - it would be an ass thing to do, but I would get it at least... but with the other two units damaged too, it wouldn't make any sense since you wouldn't be able to pay for those repairs.

I'll be thinking of you and your family, hope everything works out OK.

ScientistMother said...

It would be unethical for the insurance company to not cover the flood because of the board. I would go over the condo policy with a fine tooth comb. I am glad that you have good friends assisting you. Its not easy moving around with a toddler. I hope the situation gets fixed sooner than later.

Unknown said...

Wow, thanks for the update. I've been thinking about your family the past days... I hope that the insurance problem is soon solved and that they can cover the damages. Good friends are such a gift. I'm glad that you've found yourself with many
...oh, and I love Dr Isis. She makes me laugh too

MommyProf said...

Ack! I'm so sorry!

mama of the valley said...

So glad to hear that things are looking up!

Janus Professor said...

So sorry to hear about your condo!

What isn't clear to me is the board's motivation for denying you access to insurance?? Is it just run-of-the-mill cruelty? Or are the concerned that everyone's rates will go up, so they want to save $100?

Isis the Scientist said...

Wow, Scientist and Mother, this sounds absolutely horrible! Far more horrible than anything the Isis family has been through. The Isis family will remember the ScienceMama family in their nite-nite prayers.

Unknown said...

Horrified at what happened. Glad you're OK.