F4 Is In The House!

[fish-fighting-illini]

   Just wanted to pop in and drop a note that I live in Washington IL.

You might have seen all of the devastation on the news.

What you saw on the news I can see out my front door.

 

I have some damage to my roof (mainly shingles and a couple of punctures), outer pane only of a couple of windows and sliding glass door, patio furniture missing etc. One of our cars was totaled in the process.

Most importantly my family was not hurt.

Fortunately despite a condensed area and having an F4 tornado only one person lost their life. That is one too many but better than the 100's that you would have figured it would be when you look at the pictures and that it was an F4.

 

We are very fortunate as the house across the street lost its entire roof.

3 houses West or North either way and the houses have been completely reduced to rubble!!!! (what you see on the news).

 

I would post pic's but my time is very limited. All the pictures that I have are over 2m ea

 

I could go on and on but I've got a lot to do yet.

[Dwight Hottle]

Glad you are safe. Tornados are wicked. Hopefully your insurance will make it right.

[gr8outdoorz]

Glad you & your family are safe!!

[slonezp]

Glad you're ok. I'm north of you and what I saw here was bad but not like you got..

[SirSnookalot]

Tornadoes are really bad.

 

I know for a named tropical storm or hurricane a different deductible is in force, do insurance companies do the same for a tornado?

[Oregon Native]

Glad everyones ok

[tholmes]

Glad to hear that you & your family are OK. 

 

Tornadoes are some scary storms!

 

Tom

[Chris at Tech]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan or tornadoes and luckily have never been too close.  I did experience a 500-year flood first hand at my old house, and unfortunately most of those houses who flooded were not in flood plains, and therefore were not covered by insurance.  Terribly sad.

 

Glad you guys were safe.

[Nice_Bass]

I am only about 20 minutes away, and still cannot believe more people were not hurt or killed, and have some friends with total losses. 

We should figure out a way to bring folks fishing come spring- as I am sure along with everything else they lost, the fishing gear/boats will not be the first items they will get replaced.  

[scrutch]

We got that storm a few hours after you did but didn't have nearly the damage.  It whipped us up pretty good though.  I'm a lineman for the electric company here and we worked from Sunday afternoon until Thursday at 6pm.  It sure was an odd storm for November.

 

Glad to hear that you're ok!

[fish-fighting-illini]

Tornadoes are really bad.

 

I know for a named tropical storm or hurricane a different deductible is in force, do insurance companies do the same for a tornado?

 

Luckily no difference in deductible. Just $1k for the house and $500 for the car.

[fish-fighting-illini]

BTW,

 

I added some pictures to my original post.

I probably made them too small.

If I get time I will go back and re-size them

[Bankbeater]

Wow, glad everyone made it through ok.  We saw the storms forming over and moving east. 

[fish-fighting-illini]

This might be the closest to what it looks like starting at 2-3 houses away.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3yL7k0Lh14g&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D3yL7k0Lh14g

[fish-fighting-illini]

From someone's security camera system.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iB7KyLxvkYk&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DiB7KyLxvkYk

[Dwight Hottle]

Man that devastation is mind boggling. Just unreal.

[fish-fighting-illini]

Finally going to get started at my house.

Our garage wall will be fixed on Wednesday. The roof will be done shortly after and the chimney fixed as well.

That will be good then I can see about volunteering some to help others.

[Redlinerobert]

Good God almighty.  Glad you're ok.

[fish-fighting-illini]

I'm 3 normal sized houses back up the street from the picture with the yield sign.

Everything to the right of that yield sign is total devastation for maybe 3 or 4 miles and is about 1/2 mile wide.

Two houses straight ahead through that yield sign is also all gone.

1100 homes severely damaged, a large portion of which are completely gone.

[fish-fighting-illini]

The house directly across the street is in the darker picture.

[Redlinerobert]

I'll take an earthquake over a tornado any day. 

[Grizzn N Bassin]

Wow thats terrible glad you and your family are okay.

[fish-fighting-illini]

Robert I think that they would have very similar outcomes.

The only difference is earthquake survivors would know where their garbage cans are at!

[fish-fighting-illini]

   Update,

 

   It has taken over a year to get to this point. We finally finished up with the insurance co 2 days before the 1 year mark.

Not all of that is their fault it is just a slow and tedious process in general. had they not "accidently" kept leaving things out it would have gone much faster.

Not all damage shows up right away some of it can take a month or more to show up as the house settles back. We found quite a bit of damage after the fact and

had to have an engineer look at some potential structural issues (they turned out to be fine). That took a month all by itself.

 

We started out at around $9K on the 1st insurance estimate (house only) and finished up at around $45k

The roof and garage wall were fixed back in March or so. The patio and storm doors we installed back then as well.

With the additional late damage that showed up it delayed things a bunch. Plus the insurance co missed a lot on their 2nd trip out.

When we got the 3rd adjuster out in Sept or Oct(?) things moved along a little better. Actually I think that things starting moving much quicker when my contractor reamed there arses.

Our siding was put on last week. We also installed new outdoor lighting and redid the porch so the outside of our house looks better than it did before the tornado.

The painter is there this week to do the vaulted ceilings. I did the bedroom painting so that we can put it towards upgrading the house.

 

Note: We were (understandably) put on the back burner so that the contractors could focus on the people whose homes were destroyed and no longer had a place to live.

We have been able to live in our house within a few days of the storm when we got power and water restored.

Of the 890 homes that were demolished a lot have gone up but probably only around 200(?) are finished enough for people to have moved in.

 

I've learned a lot about insurance and how they work (kind of mind boggling.

We have witnessed the wonderful humanity and tremendous caring of people.

One plus is that I have lost 30lbs (got a 12# running head start from the tornado) and am still working at that.

 

We will still have some chimney, outside back staircase block and some other things to do but progress is coming along.

 

I'll post an updated picture as soon as I can remember how to post one.

 

FFI - Washington IL