Resurfacing: Part 3 - "Puff Back"

As the saying goes, "When it rains, it pours" ... or clobbers.

A "Puff Back" is what happens when your oil-burning furnace malfunctions and blows oil-based soot all over the place. All over. On every surface, in closets, cabinets, containers, nooks, crannies, crevices, and every place that isn't air-tight (that leaves the refrigerator and... ???).

That is what we came home to after three weeks in Utah. The ordeal lasted about a month, although we are still dealing with a few residual effects of it (there are still a few items of furniture that we need to replace, etc). We were displaced from our home  in the middle of winter. We lost well over 50% of all our belongings.

The short story is this:

Some things got "cleaned", insurance payout was still pending after a month of hassle, we replaced our broken-down car, we continued our house hunt while free-loading off of our neighbors, soot-enduced coughing began to subside, and all of our belongings were stuffed in the garage (the salvageable stuff on one side, and the unsalvageable on the other).

During this time, as one might imagine, we relied heavily on others. Neighbors opened their homes to us. Care packages and gift cards were sent to brighten our days and provide the girls with some toys, clothing, and things to do, childcare was offered, meals were brought to us, phone calls were made, etc. We were overwhelmed with the outreach and kindness extended to us. We really have wonderful people in our lives!

Lessons learned? We had way too much stuff. As for items lost? Hey, it's only stuff. I am grateful for the perspective that these events have given me. I'm exhausted emotionally, physically, mentally, etc, but life is great!

*Photos to come soon

The long story is this:

I kept a timeline of events - for insurance purposes.  If you really want to know, here's what happened:

• Jan. 4: We called our neighbor to go over and turn the heat up 55 degree where we left it, so that the house would be warm when we arrived that evening. It was cold and dark, about 9:00 pm, when we got home after a full day of traveling. We were exhausted. We noticed something was wrong when we turned the lights on and saw a grayish haze throughout the house. We opened the doors for a few minutes to help clear the air (good bye warmth), unaware of how bad the situation was. If we had known, we would have just gotten back into the car and found a hotel immediately. We noticed what we thought were cob webs (they turned out to be “soot tags”) all over the house, and areas with small chunks of black ash scattered around, including on the kitchen counter and on the children’s bedspreads. There were also big blackish smears around all of the heating vents.
• Desperate for sleep, we took the bed spreads off, and found what we thought were clean blankets from the closet for the children to sleep with. By this time, everyone had black on their fingers and feet. Our two year old had black on her knees and face as well. Adam called our landlord and explained the situation. The landlord said he’d have someone over tomorrow and told us to call the oil company. We were exhausted, and decided to just sleep and work things out in the morning. I was reluctant to sleep there, but couldn't think of a good alternative. We stayed there, and inhaled the polluted air for ten to twelve hours.

• Jan. 5:
  When we woke up the next day we discovered that black soot lined our noses (blowing our noses was a black mess). I could feel a film in my mouth. I hated to think about the black air that we had inhaled. There was a fine layer of soot lining our lungs. If you ran your finger along any surface of the house, as if to check for dust on a shelf, you would see blackness on your finger. It might not have been obvious to the naked eye, but it was everywhere – EVERYwhere. 
  We ate breakfast with food and dishes that we assumed were clean, but that we now know were contaminated with soot. I got the children ready and took them to the YMCA to get out of the house. Adam stayed to talk to the Mitchell Oil Company representative and with our landlord. After lunch, at the YMCA, the children and I returned to get our unpacked luggage (which was now covered in a fine layer of soot) and take it to our landlord’s house to stay. Thank goodness we had suitcases that were already packed! There are no hotels in Redding. It would have been very inconvenient to find a place outside of town given that I have two children in school as well as four chickens to care for on our property. It was at about this time that we noticed our 5 year old coughing quite a bit.

• Jan. 7: I called Progressive to confirm the claim we filed the night before, but they said that they didn’t have our claim on file. Thank goodness we were required to get renter's insurance!!! I filed again over the phone. I was told to call a mitigation company (cleaning company) to give me an estimate about how much it would cost to clean the belongings in my home.

Also, we began to wonder if our daughter’s cough could be related to the exposure to soot (it seems obvious now, but at the time we didn't know the full extent of what we were dealing with). Our 2 year old was coughing a little as well.

• Jan. 8: We had two different cleaning companies come to the house to assess the situation. I was advised by someone who came by our house to start cataloging all of our belongings. My neighbor, Tina, began helping me do a thorough inventory of every item in our house (down to the pencil, hanger, crayon, thumbtack etc). The inventory included a description, photo, value, and place/date of purchase wherever possible. It took weeks. I cannot overstate how painstaking, tedious, and exhaustive this task was. You don't really have a clue about how much stuff you own until you catalog it in such a detailed way. Tina volunteered her time day after day to do this with me, and others helped watch Sonoma while we worked. We had to use plastic gloves that got black with soot after a while. UGH.

• Jan. 10: We moved from our landlord's house into another neighbor’s home. The home belongs to our friends, Jake and Erika. It was originally the final home of Mark Twain, and he actually passed away in the room where we slept!  
• We decided to use 'Service Master' for the professional cleaning of our salvagable belongings. My landlord was getting concerned that things were taking so long to get started on the cleaning because it is winter, and they were worried that pipes would freeze. Their insurance company was putting pressure on them to get the house cleaned so that they would not have to pay too much in “loss of rent”, but they didn’t want to have the structure cleaned before the contents as the soot might then spread again.

• Jan 14: A field adjuster from Progressive came to the house. He walked through the house, assessed the damage, took pictures, and discusses our situation. He recommended that I throw out the food items in our kitchen, and anything made with plastic from the kitchen. He recommended that we throw out our many plastic buckets of food storage. He recommended throwing out our sofas, mattresses, and bedding, along with many other things. He said he would recommend that Progressive set aside the full $25,000 from our policy limit because the damages would add up to more than that anyway.

• Jan 15: We took Ruby and Sonoma to the doctor’s office because of our growing concerns about their coughs. Adam was coughing now as well. They had no other symptoms other than a dry cough. The doctor didn’t seem to know anything about exposure to puff back soot. She called poison control from the office, and they were not too sure either. Neither party seemed very concerned. We were sent away without any medication or anything advice other than that there were a lot of illnesses going around.
  • Tina, along with people from the church continued to help with cataloging, moving, child care, etc.

• Jan. 18: Service Master finally came to start cleaning the house, but needed to re-evaluate and requote the amount that it would cost to clean the items left in our house. I was told that I would get a new quote later that day (which I never received). So, the cleaning was postponed.

• Also, six ladies came from church and worked to clean the Mark Twain “pool house” so that we could move in there and be in our own space until we could have a home again. They worked for about 4 hours. My neighbor and I cataloged items from 8am until 6pm. Progressive was hard to get ahold of. I left a messages explaining that we were getting very anxious about the fact that we need to replace so many items, and that we had not received any money from them yet. We were in great need of bedding, towels, mattresses, appliances, toiletries, etc, but didn’t have the money to just go out and buy everything. Later, I spoke to another adjuster with Progressive. He told me he could advance us $1000 until we were able to make other arrangements with our adjuster. I felt that $1000 was not enough, especially since the field adjuster had submitted a recommendation that we get the full $25000 from our policy limit.

Ruby‘s cough became so intense that she began throwing up coughing so hard. We had been treating her with over the counter medicine as well as honey, and Vick’s Vapor Rub on her chest and the bottoms of her feet.

• Jan 19: Adam and I worked on and off at the house cataloging and cleaning items that could be cleaned with Dawn dish soap. I also took a huge bag of laundry to the dry cleaners. Most of our textiles were destroyed, but there were a few items that, although damaged, I just wasn't ready to part with, such as a quilt that I made with my grandma, etc.

• Jan 20: Adam and I worked at the pool house to finish some of the cleaning. We also continued inventory of the house, moved things into the garage, etc. All of our storage bins, even on the inside were affected (photos, seasonal decorations, camping gear, keepsakes, etc).

• Jan 21: We did more work over at the neighbor’s pool house to make it ready to move into Tina and I worked on finishing up things for the cleaners in the house for about 6 hours (they still hadn't started cleaning). During that time, we discovered that even the mattress inside the leather pull-out couch had soot on it.

• Jan 22 - 24: We finally moved into the pool house! We continued to move, clean, and organize, day and night. It was all-consuming. The cleaners began working on the structure of the house, but could not begin cleaning our contents because the insurance company required a quote from them.
  • • • They required that the cleaning company itemize everything that they were going to clean. I explained that I didn’t want the cleaning company to do that because I had already gone to the tedious trouble of itemizing everything, and I didn’t want ot pay them to do it again.
  Finally, I decided to bypass that hassle, and pay the cleaners out of pocket so that they could get started cleaning our stuff (the oil is corrosive and has been sitting on our stuff for weeks if not longer than a month).

I had also been slowly submitting receipts and inventory sheets to my adjuster. I called everyday at that point, just so that our claim wouldn't be ignored.

• To save money on cleaning costs, I spent hours and hours washing silverware, pots, pans, mason jars, hangers, etc, etc, etc. in a bathtub. We also asked that our oil paintings not be sent out to a special cleaners. We moved all items that were unsalvagable out into the garage so that the remaining items in the house were the only items that the cleaners needed to clean.

• Jan 25: I paid the cleaners over the phone and they agreed to start cleaning our stuff the next day. Whew.

My youngest two children (and Adam) continued to cough all of the time. Sonoma was now coughing so hard that she would throw up as well.

Adam did a little work at the house and decided to work from there because there was internet there (not at the pool house). He got thirsty and took a big swig of water from the faucet, only to realize that it was bleach water. Our landlords, thinking that it was safe because the house was not being lived in, poured bleach into the well to clean the system (something you do every couple of years apparently). Adam looked up poison control. He didn’t have milk or water or anything like that in the house to flush his system. He tasted bleach all day, but seemed fine. Luckily it was quite diluted.

Meanwhile, I was running an errand when the engine light went on and said “Transmission service required”. I took it to the Volvo shop and learned that we needed a new transmission and radiator, and the all-wheel drive was out. It would be around $6,000 to replace - which was more than the car was worth.

Later, I went over to the house to pack and move more boxes into the garage only to get dripped on with bleach water (Seriously???). I looked up and saw that the ceiling to the garage was dripping water onto our stuff - but mostly the floor. I guess that something happened with the bleaching of the water, and pipes freezing or something. I went upstairs and found that the shower was clogged. I called the landlord and they came over and took care of it. They were quick to mention that they could not be liable for any damaged items due to the water because we were not living there.

I finished submitting 35 inventory sheets (each with 60 items) to our adjuster. There were a few more sheets that I could have filled (which I explained to her), but the work was tedious, and if we had already reached our policy limit of $25,000, then it wasn't worth it.

• Jan 26: We added car hunting to house hunting. We hoped to find a new place to live and a car to trade with ours. Adam and three men from our church came to help move out big furniture items into our garage.

• Jan 27: We cleaned, packed up, and moved as we could while the cleaners worked on our things (they would clean, then we would pack it up).

Often in the evenings and afternoons we would go look at potential houses to live in. The rental market was not great because after Hurricane Sandy, many people were displaced and had taken up a lot of the available rentals in the area.

• Jan 28: The cleaners came and finished cleaning our items (Yea!). Although, when I was packing up the "cleaned" items, I still got sooty. It's just impossible to get things all the way clean after a disaster like that.

Adam gave our Volvo (with new tires, mind you) to a dealer for a measly $1500 off of a hybrid Toyota Highlander. Goodbye paid-off car, hello car payments... and hopefully a much more reliable vehicle!

I submitted a few more receipts to our adjuster. She, naturally, was unavailable. I left a message asking her for an update (as I had done in my email to her on Thursday, and in a message to her on Friday). I tried to get ahold of her supervisor. Her answering machine states that her supervisor, Mike Fernandez, may be contacted if she has not responded to your call within 24 hours. I tried to get ahold of him a couple of times, but he was never unavailable. The first time I called him I left what I consider to be a desperate email asking for help, but he never responded. Not cool. It had been a month since the disaster, and we had only managed to squeeze $1000 out of insurance. Their behavior was cliche - an insurance company that was not responsive and difficult to work with? Where is the creativity, Progressive?

• We got a much-needed check from our landlord for $3500 from our deposit. We couldn't afford to make a deposit on another house without it. It should have been for $5000, but because Sonoma wrote on the wood paneled walls with permanent black marker (grrrr!), they were withholding the remaining amount unless we could get it cleaned. Awesome. Incidentally, the trick to getting permanent marker out of stained wood without damaging the wood is SOS pads, hairspray, and orange oil. We got it cleaned!