Sinking house is ‘heartache’ for local couple

A renovation project gone wrong has led to a string of problems for Rick and Shelly Cameron.

Rick and Shelly Cameron of Carroll Township never expected their home of 15 years to collapse right before their eyes.

The Mon Valley natives bought their house at 1652 Fourth St. at a bargain price to renovate it. They eventually refinished almost the entire home from top to bottom, including a new fireplace, floors, doors, walls and more.

Shelly, 55, said Rick, 59, put his “blood, sweat and tears” into the house, where they lived with their 17-year-old son, a 15-year-old grandson, their daughter in college, a cat, a dog and two chinchillas.

Around March, Rick, who is self-employed and has worked in concrete work/construction for around 35 years, decided the last thing that needed to be done was to make the basement more accessible.

Rick started work on the basement March 2, digging almost three feet down. About a week later, they had their first issue with the basement and had to get support to keep the right wall up after it collapsed a little bit.

“It needed to be redone,” Rick said. “It was low ceiling heights; it was barely six feet. So we went down and had a couple weeks left until I went back to work, so I figured we would do the basement with a bunch of my friends and coworkers.”

The issue was not a problem Rick couldn’t handle, so he and his team got supports for the wall, jacked up the house again and started building forms to pour a new footer around the basement when the other wall started to give.

At that point, it became too dangerous for a crew to continue to work.

On March 15, people working in the house as well as the couple’s oldest son started to yell that the house was suddenly collapsing.

“And we were in the house. I was screaming to get out,” Shelly said. “I was in the living room, and the kids in their rooms. I could hear them yelling and our older son Rick came running in and said, “Shelly, get them out. The wall’s collapsing. So I’m screaming up to the kids. The next thing you know, there’s cracks starting.

“That was the initial thing. We saw cracks going up and these brand new walls we just plastered and painted. Next thing you know, the hardwood floors, real wood we had put in, started bowing. It was like a fun house there. (Rick) knows what he’s doing. He’s been doing it for years, and it was a fluke.”

Everybody safely got out of the house, according to the couple, and for safety purposes, the Camerons moved into a hotel for a few weeks.

“I thought we could get the basement done and I could always use the equity of the house for whatever. I had six guys down there working. Once it collapsed, two of the block walls just totally caved in and they came running out of the house and they called me and said ‘Rick, you better get back here’ because we had concrete set up for the next day to start putting it all back together.”

Rick said he isn’t sure what caused the accident, but cabinets are up to the top of their nine-foot ceilings, the hardwood is buckled and sticking up in the air and the walls are cracked. There were also nails coming out of the walls.

The couple posted a video to Facebook showing the damages and explaining to area residents, who were taking pictures of their partially sunken home and posting pictures, what exactly was going on.

The house is now leaning backward — falling and twisting about six inches in the back of the house. It is around eight to 10 inches lower than the house originally was.

“It’s horrible. It looks pretty bad inside, too,” Rick said. “I’ve heard a lot of different things, maybe I should have approached it a little differently. I’ve done it before at other houses the same way and everything was fine. We never had a problem. I just think the house was old.”

Insurance issues

Instead of sitting on each floor, the whole house is sitting on the walls, which is called balloon framing, according to the couple’s public adjuster, Stephen Hnat.

“So when you have balloon framing the studs in the wall, they don’t just go to the next floor. They go basically from the basement all the way up to the roofline. Usually when there’s a platform house in construction you’ve seen, they build one floor at a time, put a floor on top of it and then a floor on top of that.

“That’s a platform house, and this is balloon. You open up the wall and you see the stud goes all the way up, and they just basically attach the joists for the floors in between the studs. So it made it worse because of how it was constructed.”

Rick decided to call his insurance company, State Farm, to look at the house. They came out a month later and told Rick his claim wouldn’t be covered in his policy — resulting in a call to Hnat, who interprets insurance policies.

Hnat came to the house, did an inspection before the house got worse and sank more, and got a copy of the Cameron’s policy. Hnat believes the collapse is covered under their policy, so he wrote a recommendation letter to State Farm.

“The policy basically states that during construction, if your house or part of your house collapses, it is a covered event. We went back and forth with State Farm several times. They brought out a structural engineer. Basically, the structural engineer confirmed that, yes, this was a collapse during construction and proper methods were used. But they still ended up denying the claim.

“The structural engineer wouldn’t even go inside because it was too dangerous. Their own structural engineer said that.”

Hnat said he has contacted State Farm numerous times — with about six different emails and about 25 to 30 letters — trying to argue the collapse is covered under the couple’s homeowners’ policy.

Five months later, State Farm still has not explained to Hnat or the Camerons why the claim was denied, and they have been begging for answers.

“They are just not responding. I deal with State Farm all the time, so I have a lot of State Farm claims,” Hnat said. “They’re always pretty difficult, but this one they are just being (difficult). It’s a total loss. Under his policy, they have to rebuild his house, and it’s a large claim.

“They’re basically denying it for cracks. It’s well beyond cracks. The State Farm agent was out here before I was out here and it wasn’t any way this bad. We’ve sent pictures to them of how it looks. It’s a collapse. They had walls collapse in there.”

The Pennsylvania Unfair Claims Practice Act, according to Hnat, is a law that dictates State Farm needs to respond to them within two weeks with any questions they may have about the claim.

“They aren’t doing that,” Hnat said. “They’re basically violating the law in doing that. Everything is based on the Unfair Claims Practice Act and we brought it up again and again. The law interprets that as well as if there is any of these between that, it should go in favor of the homeowner and they should have bargaining rights during that.

“And when there’s something in the policy, they should be out there finding coverage, not denying it. The idea of insurance is to find the coverage in the policy.”

Rick said the ordeal has been made worse dealing with their insurance company.

“I’m thinking this is supposed to be covered. Why am I still sitting here five months later? We were put out. I didn’t have a lot of money put away. It’s been a big financial burden for sure. I’m just so frustrated it’s like if you are supposed to cover this, why aren’t you covering this?”

State Farm’s media relations team released the following statement: “We are reaching out to our customer to see if we can be of assistance. Our goal is to help our customer by reviewing the facts of their loss, identifying the damages and applicable coverage, and providing any payment available under the policy. With any claim, State Farm seeks to provide our customers all benefits to which they are entitled within the terms of the insurance policy.”

Moving forward

The Camerons only had seven $800 mortgage payments left on the house before it would have been paid off.

The family has since moved into a rental house and is paying for both their mortgage and their rental.

“We would be OK, but now we’re renting and paying a mortgage and State Farm’s done nothing,” Shelly said. “It was March and here we are. Almost September. I try to laugh, but right now, I want to cry thinking about it because it hurts.

“My heart hurts for him because he is our main provider. Rick works. I haven’t been able to for years, and Rick takes care of us all. He’s taking care of me and three other people in our house, and he has put a lot of his heart and soul into everything and now we get to tear it down. This is horrible.”

Hnat added as they are in the midst of hearing back from State Farm, they are considering taking legal action, which will cost even more money.

The couple will also be paying out of pocket for a demolition of the house, which was ordered by Carroll Township officials due to it being a safety issue. The cost to tear down the house will be $25,000 to $30,000.

At a recent meeting, Carroll Township’s solicitor, engineer and zoning/ code enforcement officer were authorized to proceed with required clearances and to solicit bids for emergency demolition should the property owners fail to demolish the structure in the allotted time frame.

It was approved unanimously by supervisors Ken Hillman, Thomas Rapp and Gary Lenzi.

“If you start down the hill and you see it, it’s interesting, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Hillman said. “They were trying to redo the foundation to lower the basement floor and it gave way. It went from a two-story house to a single-story house, it just collapsed.”

Rick is planning on starting the demo next week.

The house is “unsaveable,” according to the couple and Hnat, who said they are going to rebuild a new house on the property. They said they loved the property, the neighborhood has been very helpful, and the location is still home.

“(This) isn’t something that happens too often,” Rick said. “We’ll see how it all turns out, but we’re doing all right. We’re here now. We’re resilient.

“One day it will all be behind us just like everything else, but this is definitely a big one. We’ll get through it. What are you going to do?”

Shelly said her and Rick have cried together about the situation and hopes one day it will be past them.

“Through the years, we’ve been through it, believe me,” Shelly said. “We’re in a bind. At least we got a roof over our head, we’re together. It is a heartache.”

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