A pickup truck heading 151 km/h crashed into her house on Aug. 18, 2021, and it has been a trying time for Holly Parent and her family ever since.
Now, two years after the crash, Parent has entered into arbitration with her insurance company over what she calls “shoddy and unfinished work.”
“I ran outside my bedroom door and there was a truck right inside our entryway. I was panicked and screamed at my son to make sure he was OK,” Parent says, recounting the events of two years ago.
In a small miracle, nobody — including the truck driver and his passenger — was significantly hurt in the crash. The material damage to the house was immense.
“Our front door landed in the living room, our stairs were gone, cement boulders were flung through the downstairs walls and the shock cracked the foundation in the basement bathroom. It took the tow truck driver an hour and a half to get the truck out because it had ripped up our flooring and was teetering into the basement.”
Initially, Parent says her insurer, Wawanesa Insurance, told her not to worry and that her comprehensive coverage would take care of everything. That’s something Parent feels, did not happen.
Parent and her family were moved into temporary housing for 14 months while their home was fixed up by a contractor. That is when she says the issues started piling up.
“We would check on the house every week from day one after the crash and make the contractor aware of all the damage that we would find,” she says.
“The contractor was not very helpful. We often got the reply: ‘It is not in the scope, not our problem, must have been there before.'”
After much back and forth with the insurance company, Parent says she managed to get some of the damage, like the cracked basement bathroom foundation fixed, but she is not happy with the process or the result.
Currently, her house in the 1300 block of Latrace Road looks fine from the outside, but after living back in her house for not even a year, cracks are showing all over the walls. Part of the damage was only found when she moved back in. Parent says the fix-up was badly done and she fears there might be deeper structural damage that was never addressed.
“The job is just not finished. All over the house are cracks. Those were never there before,” says Parent while showing Global News around her house.
Her son, Mark Anthony Booth, echoes her sentiment. “To me, it just looks like they did a very rushed job. The cracks are one thing, but we had to tell the contractor about so many things they missed and initially did not want to fix.”
The crash has taken over every aspect of Parent’s life and she says she has difficulties moving on.
“I have been so stressed that I suffered multiple nervous breakdowns. I lost my job because of this whole thing.
“It has been consuming of mind, time and emotion.”
Her ordeal has not ended yet. In October of last year, Parent claims a painter came over, making her sign a document to confirm his paint job.
She says that afterwards, the insurance company told her that she signed the certificate of completion, confirming the entire house was done. She feels she was tricked.
“There never was a walkthrough for the completion of the house. The painter just showed the work he did and that is what I thought I signed for,” Parent says.
After the initial shock, Parent decided to fight back. Her insurance broker has assigned her a claims advocate. She has also hired a lawyer and has entered into arbitration.
“Our walls are cracking all over the place, our living room wall buckled at some point, and there are some things that were never fixed. How can you say that this house was completed?”
For the arbitration, Parent needs experts to come in and check the damage in the house. She says she is having difficulties in finding the right people. She says experts do not want to take the job, because the project is too big and complex, or they think she cannot pay for the services.
“I am getting desperate,” Parent says. “I am asking contractors or engineers to call me, text me, show up at my house on Latrace Road — even contact Global News so they can connect us. I just need two contractors, and possibly an engineer down the road, to look at the house and say what damage was from the crash and what is normal wear and tear.”
Wawanesa Insurance declined to comment on the entire situation, citing privacy protections “to protect the interests and privacy of our members.”
“We do not publicly comment on the specifics of any claim, nor do we discuss matters currently under dispute,” Wawanesa Insurance tells Global News in an email.
Parent says that if experts determine some of the damage was not from the crash, she is willing to accept it. She says she wants to finally get things sorted and be released from her heavy burden. Time is ticking, because she needs to get everything resolved before May 2024, as her mortgage renewal is coming up.