“What are you prepared to do?” Where will you go? Who will go?

Hi folks, this is my third installment of the saga that has been our life for the past year. If you haven’t read my previous two blog posts, you might want to jump off here and go check those out first. The first post being “Fire Safety and protection from the flames” and the second is “Homeowner’s insurance, Renter’s insurance, and most importantly Blessed Assurance”

Quick recap we had a car catch fire in the basement garage of our home July 12th, 2024, and have been through trials and tribulations dealing with the insurance company and up to this point two different remediation companies. The third remediation company (TRC) might make an entrance during this post if I have time.

Peter tells us “That the trials of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” Man! they are rough when you are in them though.

What are you prepared to do is a favorite line of mine from The Untouchables with Sean Connery and Kevin Costner.  Well, what are you prepared to do?  What am I prepared to do?  What can anyone do?  Well here is what Isaiah was prepared to do in Isaiah  Chapter 6  Isaiah has seen the Lord high and lifted up and in verse 8 he hears the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  Isaiah answers “Here am I; send me.”  Isaiah was then commanded of God to “Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.”  Does that sound familiar?  It should!  Jesus references this passage in Matthew 13:14-15 “And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”

Mark 4:12 and John 12:40 are similar passages as well.

So, at this point I’m still home alone with the dogs and the cat.  My wife and kids are with my in-laws.  Any of the grandparents out there can confirm this for me or correct me if I’m wrong.  Is one of the best parts about having grandkids is getting to send them back to their parents?  Feed them all the sugar and spoil them, you know, all the things you never did with your kids.  Am I on the right track?  Well anyway after 10 days of a house not used to having 2 whirlwind kids and a baby living there, it was probably time to see if we could find somewhere else to stay and as a family again.  Kids miss their dad, dad misses kids, etc.  State farm says I have additional living expenses (ALE).  Okay, I need one of these extended stay places with a kitchen, I have celiac and eating out all the time is not an option.  I’m told if the place has a kitchen my ALE won’t cover eating out… who cares we need a place to stay!  Who is going to dine out all the time for weeks, possibly months when it is going to make them sick.  State Farm says I must use their supplier, let’s call the (ALES) to find a hotel/extended stay suite place.  ALES contacts me; I tell them what I need and am continually told nothing is available.  Nothing? Really?  I’m looking online too at all kinds of places that are available, but no! I must go through them.  I finally got the lady to find me a place, it’s a suite, no kitchen, but State Farm won’t cover dining out.  Whatever we need something.  The place ended up being right overtop of a bar that has a live band literally every single night.  If any of you out there have had or do have a baby a few months old this is not ideal.  Dogs can’t stay there so someone must drive back to let the dogs out of the house a couple times a day.  On top of that I was told if I needed to make changes to my stay or adjust the stay just let the hotel know and they would contact ALES.  I didn’t stay there the first night it was booked, I let front desk know, they adjusted my stay.  Next day I get a call from a very irate lady at ALES about how I must only go through her and she has all the authority to cancel my stay and informs me she will do so.  I being proactive, call the front desk and explain what is going on and ask them to keep our room for us.  We get to check in and my stay has been canceled by ALES, but the lady at the front desk I spoke to earlier says “No, we got this and they reinstate my stay.   We knew you were coming; you told us we will try to get this fixed.  Next day, stay has been canceled again, front desk people are furious with ALES, one says, “man that lady with ALES is a piece of work” Finally I get a supervisor with ALES, and he says everything is all squared away now.  The front desk was able to find where the lady from ALES remotely removed my bookings and then went back in to try and cover it up.

Alright let’s not stay in anymore hotels if we must deal with this ALES place.  By this time Second Remediation Contractor (SRC) is saying home is okay to live in.  We move back in.  Wife smells soot everywhere all the time.  I can only smell it when I leave the house for prolonged periods of time and come back.  Almost everyone who came over to visit says they can smell soot and smoke from the front yard.  Okay we have three little kids, is this house safe to live in?  Start looking around, lots of things have not been cleaned.  Duct work still has soot in it.  What about the new furnace and A/C?  No, not clean!

So back to what I said in my previous posts. You need existing relationships with a lawyer and a contractor. You need to have the condition of your home documented and have your personal property documented.

Now enter Third Remediation Contractor (TRC).  I drove by their location on the way back and forth to work and they’ve got catchy billboards everywhere.  I call them.  “No, you need a real live person as an adjuster” they say.  I ask them to come out and look at the house.  “None of this work is done right, this would take at least three to six months” I’m told.  “We will be happy to get a real adjuster involved” they tell me.  Alright, maybe things will get better now?  State Farm sends out an adjuster for the house/structure, I’m still not allowed to have a live person on-site adjuster, but he can document some of my portion also.  Now conference call with me and my wife, two guys from TRC and live on-site adjuster with State Farm and my possibly AI adjuster at State Farm (I’ll just call her that, because I’m not sure she has a heart like the TinMan).  It is explained to the possibly AI adjuster at State Farm that the SRC has falsified the claim, it is okay for TRC to come in and correct the damages and complete the remediation properly, however since my contents were already “cleaned” State Farm will not cover the “cleaning” again.  TRC will examine and put together a list of items that need to be “claimed” and it is documented that SRC has falsely stated everything was salvaged. TRC says the interior of the house and areas extremely contaminated with soot can be demolished and rebuilt in 3 to 6 months.  Both adjusters agree this is okay.  Sidebar here, apparently adjusters don’t know the limits on your insurance policies or at least the one I have for my renter’s policy doesn’t know.  I didn’t just buy a renter’s policy to add another line of insurance, so I’d get a discount.  I bought a renter’s policy, because I started looking at all the things I had accumulated over the course of my lifetime and how expensive some of them would be to replace if something happened.  Craftsman and Snap-On tools are expensive, and Craftsman practically doesn’t exist now.   So, my policy has enough coverage to practically just buy a house and this whole issue could’ve been over.  But insurance doesn’t work that way, they want you to rent something, you can’t buy a camper and live in it, but you can rent one and live in it cause you won’t own it and you have to give it back.  Three to Six months okay let’s rent a camper have it put in the driveway, maybe buy one of those buildings every corner gas station has for sale and make that the kids playroom. 

Okay, this could work, after all it is only for three to six months.  Alright now to find a camper.  I must find a camper on my own and then State Farm will take over the rental of it and like I said earlier I’m not allowed to just buy one.  My wife and I call every camper dealer in the area.  “No, we don’t rent campers” they say.  Look online, we found one that might work, it has got to be returned every so month for maintenance.  I’m pretty stressed out at this point; my wife probably is too.  We as a family haven’t done anything fun together since this all started.  Let’s take a trip to French Creek Game Farm.  On the way there we see a great big RV/camper place around Lost Creek or Jane Lew.  I tell my wife to call them.  She talks to a nice lady there and explains what we have going on.  The nice lady explains they rent campers and would be happy to help, but all their campers are currently rented out.  She tells my wife that they have a used one on the lot she thinks would be perfect for us, but she needs approval to put it into the rental fleet.  She says she will talk with the bosses on Monday and see what she can do.

We get a call from TRC while on the trip to French Creek and are told they are ready to start work, they got all the approvals and whenever we are ready to move out, they’ll be there to pack up all our belongings and move them into a shipping container for storage till they are done.  Okay, things sound promising, finally! Our life is going to start working its way back to normal… just a little longer… we can do this. 

So dear reader, where will you go when disaster strikes?  Do you have a place to flee to?  Jesus tells us in Matthew 24:17-18 “Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.”

Please don’t be among those who flee and “hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;”  Please don’t say “to the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:” 

What are you prepared to do?  Are you prepared to repent and confess your sins, draw near to God through his son Christ Jesus?  Or will you flee and hide yourselves in the mountains and in the rocks?

Our story continues with “A burden too heavey and a few new places to stay short term”.  I’m not even to the end of 2024 yet there is plenty more to come.