NEWS

Lesson in home insurance learned hard way

Jon Hand
@jonhand1
Mary Houck holds a lantern as she stands in the basement of her home in Farmington on July 15, 2015. Houck is living in the home without hot water and electricity is only available for certain appliances in her home.

When the cinder-block basement wall of her Farmington home collapsed June 14, Mary Houck learned a difficult lesson about the homeowner's insurance she's had for 30 years:

"If it comes from above, you're covered. If it comes from the earth, there's nothing for you."

That's what Houck said she has been told in a letter from a State Farm representative who said collapses such as hers — and another just a few miles away the same day — are not covered by typical homeowner's insurance, and she's left to pay two bills: About $16,000 to temporarily enclose the basement; and likely more than $40,000 to permanently fix the problem. The last assessment on the house was $104,000.

"There is one sentence in the insurance policy that is an exclusion that says the earth can not cause the damage," she said. "If a tree had fallen on my house, not only would everything be covered but also the replacement value — the entire basement was filled with things."

"The dumpster was absolutely filled with things from my basement. So many things were lost, my genealogy was down there, important papers. They saved what they could but it wasn't much."

Houck said she was given about $270 from the American Red Cross to cover a clothing purchase and "a couple nights in a cheap motel."

When the wall collapsed, she said, "I was given five minutes to leave the house. They wouldn't let me take my cats with me. They shut off the electricity and gas."

Since then, power has been restored to the kitchen and she has one light in her bathroom.

She has no hot water so she either showers at work, at a friend's home or washes her hair with cold water. Friends and coworkers (Houck is a psychiatric nurse at Strong Memorial Hospital) have given her money to help with items such as food and clothing.

A spokesman for State Farm's corporate office acknowledged that damage that is caused by earth movement is not covered.

The collapse of Houck's wall was likely caused by hydrostatic pressure from groundwater that had built up over time rather than the pouring rain on June 14, said Farmington Code Enforcement Officer Floyd Kofahl, who visited the home that day.

"I don't think that was directly created that day," Kofahl said. "It just happened that that day it caved in. I don't think it had anything to do with the flood."

It was a different story for Janice Burkhart's home on Route 96 in Farmington, which also lost a basement wall on June 14.

"Theirs (the Burkhart's) was related to runoff from the rain because they are in a location where the runoff comes from farmland coming down a hillside," Kofahl said. "With the volume of rain we've had in June — we basically had two 100-year events — it created such saturation that the June 14 rain created hydrostatic pressure on Janice's property and created a situation where the wall, about 40-feet long, couldn't handle it and it literally blew in the wall."

Kofahl estimated that there have been about 10 wall collapses due to hydrostatic pressure in his area in the past 10 years.

Like Houck, he was also surprised to learn that insurance does not cover events like those at the two Farmington homes.

He said he's been told that both homes would have been covered if they had flood insurance, but noted that type of insurance could be "upwards of $6,000 for the average home" in a flood plain, or up to a couple of thousand outside of a flood plain.

In Houck's case, the damage to her home was just the beginning of a series of hardships: The following day, her brother died and in the same week the brakes gave out on her car and she lost her computer.

"Things have been so chaotic," said Houck, who called it ironic that she was planning to move in the next few months to be closer to her daughter in Washington, D.C.

Before June 14, she said, she expected to spend about $5,000 to get the house ready to sell.

"That estimate has changed dramatically," she said and laughed.

JHAND@DemocratandChronicle.com

About Jon Hand

Jon Hand is the Democrat and Chronicle's Problem Solver watchdog reporter. Contact him at JHAND@DemocratandChronicle.com and follow him at Twitter.com/jonhand1.