Families feel betrayed by insurance caps put on water damage
Joe Furlan lifted up another pile of sopping wet carpet and carried it out to the curb. Then he headed back down to the ruin that was his basement.
Picking his way through puddles of water and human excrement from a backed-up sewage system at his Lacasse Boulevard home, he passed by his daughter and a friend as they trekked upstairs with armfuls of spoiled goods.
Despite his helpers, Furlan said calls to his insurance provider had left him feeling very much alone.
Like hundreds of other households trying to pick up the pieces after Thursday’s flood, Furlan felt his insurance company was leaving him high and dry.
“They told me I get $5,000,” he explained, calling it a rip off. “That isn’t going to cover anything. It was $10,000 before and now, suddenly, they say Tecumseh gets too many floods.”
Households across Windsor and Tecumseh were pummelled with record levels of precipitation starting Wednesday and throughout the day Thursday.
According to Geoff Coulson, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, the region saw a new singleday rainfall record set at Windsor Airport where the weather station measured 63.4 millimetres, drowning out the old record for Sept. 29 of 36.8 millimetres set in 1973.
“We’ve had a month’s worth of rainfall in the Windsor area since Wednesday evening,” said Coulson. “They’ve had more than double a month’s worth of rain in Tecumseh just from this event.”
Furlan said it took three sump pumps to finally clear more than a foot of a murky mixture of water and sewage from his basement where it soaked carpet and ruined furniture and appliances.
“It just started gushing up from the outside in and the sump pump couldn’t keep up,” he explained. “To be honest, I think the sewage was the worst.”
Furlan added that at one point water even started spurting from his toilet.
“I stuffed a blanked in the bowl to stop it,” he said.
Piles of ruined belongings formed miniature mountains at the ends of dozens of driveways and lines of debris revealed just how far up people’s lawns the flood had spread.
Michelle Pirouet and her husband spent the day in their basement cutting away soaked insulation and cleaning up disintegrating drywall that formed a “sludge.”
The 58-year-old said she’d received the same line as Furlan from her insurance company.
“This is insane,” she said. “I’ve never made a claim on my insurance in 40 years and they’re telling me I’m tapped out at $5,000?”
According to Anne Marie Thomas, an insurance expert with InsuranceHotline.com, unfortunately it is common for companies to limit the amount available for flooding in areas that often see water damage.
“Think of it from an insurance company standpoint,” she said. “If the windshield in your car gets smashed every year and you put in a claim, the insurance company is eventually going to say, ‘We’re not going to give you that coverage anymore.’ ”
Thomas said that the recent spate of natural disasters in Canada have forced insurance companies to pay out large sums and have forced them to look for new limits to the amounts they pay.
She added that low-lying areas with aging infrastructure and mature trees whose roots can damage drainage systems often see limited coverage for flood insurance, or no coverage at all.
Pirouet said $5,000 won’t even cover the cost of the newly bought furniture she’ll have to replace — let alone the appliances she’s lost. While she waits to hear if any other help is out there, she said she’ll continue cleaning up as much of the mess as possible.
“I’m feeling very alone and very overwhelmed,” she said through tears.