While many people look forward to relaxing at home over the holidays, Linda Leger says her house is still unlivable because of damages caused by a freak storm that hit parts of Ontario and Quebec last spring.
So instead, she’ll be spending her time at a hotel.
On May 21, a massive thunderstorm known as a derecho swept across the region, packing winds of up to 140 kilometres per hour and leaving more than a million customers without power.
The storm caused an estimated $875 million in insured damages.
Leger has had to leave her home in Prescott-Russell, just east of Ottawa, which she described as unlivable and full of debris.
She said her own ongoing battle with an insurance company to pay for repairs is yielding few results.
“The damage is serious,” she said, describing a need for workers to remove half the upper section of the house and half the roof. She said she is still fighting to repair her barns, too.
“I still have a big fight in me.”
Leger said her insurance company has paid for the removal of a fallen chimney on her roof and added a furnace after trees downed during the story damaged her heating system — work that only began in November as temperatures began to drop and there was a concern that pipes could freeze.
The company told her that contractors would be back to continue work in January, but she hasn’t been given further details on the specifics.
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But with the work only partway done, conditions in Leger’s home were bad enough that she had to leave.
For the past two weeks, she has lived at a motel, and now a hotel, at the company’s expense. Leger said she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to go home.
Melany Armstrong, who lives in the Navan area southeast of Ottawa, saw significant damage to her roof during the derecho that led to a persistent leak. The hole wasn’t repaired until earlier this fall. Damage to her house’s siding remains, and another leak persists in her garage.
She said that the unrepaired damage has caused her to worry about her children’s health.
“I have no confirmation of it, but there’s that mold, musty smell and you just know that it’s coming because of the damage that was done,” said Armstrong.
An estimate from contractors she hired to assess the damage said the repairs would cost $80,000.
But after a prolonged back-and-forth with her insurance company, Armstrong said that its latest offer was to cover only $29,000 worth of damage.
She and her husband don’t have the money to cover the difference, she said.
“I don’t even want to think of the options should we not be able to get this fixed and the damage continues to worsen.”
In May, Premier Doug Ford announced a disaster recovery assistance program to help residents and small business owners with storm-related costs.
But the program has yet to roll out.
Former Mayor Jim Watson wrote a letter to Ford in September — his second such letter — urging the province to open up the fund to residents in the Ottawa. But his office said that he did not receive a response.
Ottawa city councillor Catherine Kitts said in an interview that there is little the city can do. She said that the new mayor, Mark Sutcliffe, assured her that disaster recovery is one of his priorities.
“I’ve been just incredibly frustrated and disappointed with the lack of response,” said Kitts. “And to be honest, the lack of acknowledgement. I truly feel like people didn’t comprehend how bad it was here.”
Kitts said she will continue to push for the recovery fund to open and try to find different avenues to help residents going forward.
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