A London homeowner whose roof was damaged in a springtime storm says she is further away from getting her home fixed than she was nearly five months ago due to slow communication and action by her insurance company.
It all started the night of April 29 when a destructive storm rolled through Kirsten Smith’s Byron neighbourhood, splitting her backyard pine tree in half. The fallen tree put a large hole in Smith’s roof, damaged some windows, and ripped down her soffits and eavestroughs.
Smith said she called her home insurance company, TD Insurance, right away and received approval for coverage within a few days.
In the meantime, she brought in her own contractor to remove the dangerous tree from her backyard and put up a temporary tarp on her roof. Days later, the insurance company sent their own preferred contractor to inspect the home, create a scope of work for repair and install roof underlayment.
Smith said the help ended there.
“That’s pretty much how the house has been left at this point. No fencing repairs, no eavestroughs, nothing in terms of water management. Just some tarping on the roof,” she said.
“We were feeling really quite confident that things would move forward and we would get things done, [but] there has just been a lack of communication and a lot of delays,” Smith said.
Smith has been corresponding with TD Insurance by phone and email for the past five months, but said the company’s responses and action have been slow.
She said the company insisted it needed to receive a scope of work, engineer’s report and quote from its preferred contractor. While the tree fell in April, Smith said a TD-contracted engineer did not visit until June and their reports were not sent to her until mid-September.
“It’s been incredibly disruptive to our day-to-day lives,” she said.
In a brief email to CBC News, TD Insurance said it apologizes for the delays and inconvenience in Smith’s case.
“TD Insurance remains committed to supporting our clients and will continue to work with this client to resolve their claim,” the statement said.
Smith said she’s shelled out thousands of dollars and hours of time for makeshift repairs, including putting tarps down the side of her home and taping a plastic sheet to the ceiling of her son’s bedroom that would otherwise be open to the elements.
“I don’t mind doing those things because they do enhance safety, but I would expect that our insurance company would be working with us on this process,” she said.
However, Smith said she’s not just frustrated that her home hasn’t been properly fixed, but by all the new problems that have stemmed since then.
The hole in the roof made for a perfect entrance for three young raccoons to find shelter in the attic earlier this month, she said.
“I woke up one time at about 1:30 in the morning to the sound of footsteps above me and we spent most of that night trying to figure out a way to get them back out of our home,” Smith said, adding that she ultimately paid a professional to remove the raccoons and install mesh around the hole to keep out wildlife.
In both June and July, Smith said missing eavestroughs caused water to pool against the back of the house, leading to flooding.
“We’ve lived in this house now for 17 years. We’ve never had water in this home. Now, we’ve had two floods in the basement,” she said, adding that when she told TD about this, she was told the issue must be filed as a separate insurance claim.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s directly related to the fact that we don’t have a proper structure,” Smith said.
The situation has also led to major lifestyle changes for Smith’s entire family. Her 12-year-old son was forced to move out of his damaged bedroom and is now sleeping in the guestroom. Most of his belongings are packed in storage bins, while his desk is in the dining room and drum kit is in the living room.
Anytime it rains, Smith and her husband go to the backyard to pump water away from their home to prevent further floods. The family can’t go on vacation, Smith said, because there’s too many unknowns when leaving the house unmonitored.
“It feels very overwhelming and all-encompassing in terms of so much of our daily lives has been disrupted and is focused toward trying to mitigate further damage, trying to manage the situation and trying to advocate for the coverage that we’ve paid for in our policy,” she said.
Smith said she isn’t asking for much from TD, but just wants to see progress moving forward. She said her biggest concern is whether the house can hold up with heavy snow and maintain its heat as the weather turns in the coming weeks.
