A Car Hit My House!

I normally start with the long story and then give you a TLDR but…. A car hit my house last week and now it’s all kinds of fucked up. 

Friday night I lay my head down on my pillow sometime around 2 AM.  Sometime later while it’s still dark outside I hear my mom screaming my name over and over again.  It takes me several extra seconds to wake up but when I do I jump into run mode… and promptly ram into the wall next to my bed because I was sleeping on the wrong side.  With a growing bump on my forehead (seriously… it hurt!) I rush out to the living room and hear that “a car’s hit the house!”

I throw some clothes on, slip my shoes on and rush outside to see a car crushed into the corner of our house (spot A on the map below).  There’s a woman on the phone standing next to the car and someone in the passenger seat.  The person on the phone immediately doesn’t appear to be from the accident itself as she’s calm and cool, if not a little worried looking.  It turns out she’s our neighbor and she was getting into her car to head to work herself when she heard the bang.  She just got done talking to 911 and rescue was on the way. 

Our neighbor told me that when she heard the bang, she ran over and immediately saw a young man running from the accident and across the street.  Across the street from our house is a couple acres of open field then several acres of woods.  While I wanted to chase after I turned my attention to the car and its remaining passenger.  The car was off, but its headlight was still one… one headlight had ripped free and was in our front yard.  There was a little smoke coming from the cabin but after only a moment I realized it was from the airbags being deployed. 

When I got to the passenger it didn’t take me long to realize she was really hurt.  With the job I have, I can quickly assess facial damage from blunt force (people get punched and hit in the face a lot in prison!).  She didn’t have her seatbelt on so I assume she took the full impact of the airbag to her face.  Better than the dashboard, but airbags can hurt you if you aren’t restrained.  Remember, they’re a secondary restraining system.  The area around her right eye was very swollen and considering this was just a few (between three and five) minutes since the impact that means her orbit was broken.  Her nose was smashed and blood was running down her face and onto her sweatshirt.  I gently touched her shoulder (comforting touch) and evidently just went into nursing assessment mode. 

She was awake and said she hurt but couldn’t respond to where she was hurt.  She was asking for help.   She couldn’t give her name.  Her pupils were equal.  While she was breathing raggedly she wasn’t struggling for breath.  Her pulse was strong and racing.  I told her an ambulance was on the way and she started to struggle, saying she had to get out of there and that she didn’t need an ambulance.  She SO needed an ambulance as with an orbit fracture like that it was likely she had more severe fractures deep into her facial bones and could even have brain bleeds.  I don’t know how long it took, but the police finally arrived, and I turned her care over to them.  I may be a nurse but a sheriff’s deputy was trained in emergency medicine.  I answered a few questions (yes it was my house, no I didn’t see the accident, no the woman wasn’t alert or oriented, no one was hurt inside.  When they paused, I took a closer look at where the car impacted the house and saw that some of the car was INSIDE the house.  Not much, but it had pushed several cinder blocks out of the foundation. 

Going downstairs into the basement I was fearing what I’d find.  You see, that room in the basement was the furthest from the door.  While our basement is unfinished, that room actually has a drop ceiling and cedar paneling up.  It’s almost as if the previous owners wanted to finish the whole basement and started in that room but just never went further.  So, it’s always been our ‘long term storage’ room.  All of our Christmas decorations and stuff goes in there as well as anything that is likely to stay in the basement for a long while.  Over the years it has gotten almost completely full.  At the minimum, with the car pushing several cinder blocks into the basement I knew that the paneling would have had to be pushed in a bit. 

Yeah, it was worse.  The paneling was still on the wall, but only because the stuff stored down there (mostly junk) was keeping it up.  The cars headlight was clearly visible and illuminating the room in a way that it’s never been illuminated, giving it a truly creepy vibe.  Not seeing anything immediately dangerous (no car fluids flowing in and no fires), I went back up and offered up more information as well as watched the goings on.  The passenger was already in an ambulance and it rushed off with it’s lights flashing and sirens blaring.  I had finally seen the time and it was just about 5 in the morning.  The car had hit the house 15 minutes earlier. 

The Sherriff’s office brought out a K-9 unit to look for the fleeing driver and my neighbor left to go to work.  Eventually a tow truck showed up and helped the deputy to get into the car and get pictures before he took possession of the ‘crime scene’.  The one area they couldn’t get direct access to was the trunk as the trunk release didn’t work and they couldn’t get the keys out of the ignition (the car was stuck in drive because it was so bent).  They finally pulled the back seat open a bit, looked at each other, took a couple pictures of whatever they saw, and closed the car up.  The tow truck driver later came to me and told me that the trunk was “full of weed”. 

Eventually the last of the police leave after giving me her card and telling me to email her later for the police report.  The tow truck driver got the car out of our house/driveway and I got to sit down and collect my thoughts.  It was still dark out so I knew I’d have to go do more assessments of our property later.  I figured we’d wait until around 8 am to call the insurance agent and figure out if they were open on the weekend or if I’d have to call the national number.  It’s Saturday so we probably couldn’t get an insurance adjuster out, but we needed to at least get the hole in the side of the house boarded up. 

At that point with some coffee finally inside of me my stomach started it’s morning rumble and reminded me there was standard morning business to take care of (I had to poop).  As I went to the toilet, however, I realized one thing I hadn’t seen when looking at the basement room with the damage was the sewer line.  It runs the length of the basement (red line on map) and would be right under where the damage was.  So, I rushed back into the basement and knew there was trouble as soon as my foot splashed into a puddle. 

I had just been down there 15 minutes before and there was no puddle there before.  With a glance I could see the sewer line was broken clean apart (Right at B on the map… not even at the scene of the accident!).  There was no water further in, so I assumed it pushed the sewer line in and it just broke at its weakest point.  We had water, but we couldn’t use any or at least not let any drain away as it would just pool up on the floor of the basement.  Oh, and since mom had used the bathroom before, the puddle I had stepped in was a mixture of water already in the line and her urine. 

Yay.

I went back upstairs, changed my socks and pants out, and called the insurance agent now.  No waiting until 8.  Evidently, I woke up the ‘emergency claim’ agent as she had to “boot up her laptop” to get my information right.  I told her about the accident, the hole in the side of the house, and the broken sewer line.  She agreed that they couldn’t get an adjuster out over the weekend, but they could get the house livable in the meantime.  She would call their contractor and get someone out to board up the house while I could call around and find any plumber to get the sewer line fixed.  I’d have to pay for the plumber out of pocket, but it would be reimbursed quickly. 

I got to work on the phones and couldn’t find a plumber that was open.  Even the ones listing 24-hour emergency service were going to voicemail.  As if things couldn’t get worse, Mom told me that she had taken her morning pills.  Her morning pills include Lasix.  Lasix is a diuretic that quickly and dramatically helps with blood pressure.  I won’t go into its full mechanism, but it helps your blood pressure by making you pee.  A lot. 

Fuck.

So, I had to get mom out of the house now.  She just wasn’t going to be able to sit there for hours holding in her urine while we waited for a plumber.  My brother eventually answered his phone and agreed she could come over.  I told him she’d be right over and took her portable oxygen out to her car.  Coming back in though and I finally looked at Mom.  She was far from doing all right.  She was next to breaking down and shaking.  She couldn’t drive herself even over to my brothers, but with the agent calling the house land line, we couldn’t both leave.  Understand, she wasn’t just upset at the damage to her home, she was in the bedroom just above where the car hit.  On the main level of the house her bedroom is in the south west corner and she sleeps at C on the map.  If the car had come in a little higher, or it had been a bigger/taller vehicle, it could have easily pushed the wall right over on her. 

Another call got my brother headed to our house where he’d leave his car and drive Mom back to his place in her Escape.  Part of mom’s distress was her immediate need to pee.  So, I convinced her it was alright to use the toilet so long as she didn’t flush. 

With her doing a little better I sat her at the table and went outside to make sure the driveway was clear for my brother.  It was light out by this point and I noticed the next amount of damage to the house.  On the map I have ‘Parking for R’ and ‘Extra Parking’ marked off.  Those are two angled parking spots my Dad made in the late 80s.  That area next to the paved driveway is on a slight hill, so he had to build a retaining wall and fill it with sod and then cover it with stone.  My dad over engineered the retaining wall as he made it out of railroad ties.  Yes, the big boards that railroad track sits on.  They’re big, they’re heavy, and they’re just going to last a lifetime.  And when the bastard drove through the yard he hit them head on (at D on the map). 

He was driving so fast in a 10+ year old Chevy Cobalt that he threw five of the railroad ties across the driveway and shattered two of them like they were toothpicks.  That impact explains why there weren’t any tire tracks on the driveway… he was likely airborne at that point.  It also explains why he didn’t go further into the basement (or so I thought) as his car had at least slowed down a little.  My brother R who lives here was actually up north with my cousin so his Jeep Grand Cherokee wasn’t parked in it’s normal spot which was lucky as some of the ties would have gone right into the side of his SUV.

I moved the ties out of the way (they are SO heavy!) so my brother B could park his car.  He came and we quickly got Mom over to his place while I stayed behind and waited.  Over the next hour after calling about 10 plumbers, one finally called back.  He said he could come repair it, but he was already booked solid with other jobs and it might not be until 5 or 6 that evening.  He recommended another plumber and I called over there and left a message.  Another hour later I was involved in a facebook conversation regarding the accident, involved in two text message conversations regarding the accident, and suddenly on the phone with call after call.  The insurance agent called back to see what our status was.  After I hung up with her, the contractor called and asked what the damage was so he could get everything ready.  After I hung up with him I got a call from the plumber, or rather the owner of the plumbing company, and he said he could have one of his guys out here soon. 

After doing all of that talking I started to catch up the text messages and facebook peeps when another plumber called back.  I didn’t hear his name, but it ended with “… plumbing” so I interrupted him and told him that someone had already gotten back with us and that we were fine.  He was polite about losing the job and I went on with my day. 

As I had missed the parking spot damage earlier, I figured it was important to go out and check everything else.  After all, the car hit the house right below the electric meter where the electricity comes into the house.  So, I walked out with the phone and took a bunch of pictures of the damage.  As I looked down the cinder blocks on the front of the house, I saw that there were new cracks in there.  Huge cracks.  The cracks were all along the front, so I got close up pictures of all of those plus a wide shot to show how much of the foundation wall was broken.  I saw some that went behind a bush at the corer of the house so I walked around it and… well, at E on the map I saw why there were so many cracks in the foundation.  The cinder blocks there, opposite of where the car hit the house, were pushed out by about 3 inches.  It seems that hitting the railroad ties didn’t slow him down enough as he PUSHED the entire foundation of my house over by three inches. 

I sleep in the bedroom next to moms (on the north west corner of the house), so I went into my bedroom and played with the windows figuring that if they couldn’t raise or lower it was a sign that the walls had shifted and there was FAR more damage to the house.  They moved just fine, but I saw how more signs of just how much force was impacted into our home.  Books that sit on shelves built into my southern facing wall were almost pushed completely off.  These aren’t light paperbacks, these are Stephen King hardcovers and nursing college textbooks.  On the north facing wall I have a wardrobe and the snapback affect pushed all the watch boxes I have stacked up inside enough so that when I opened it’s doors they all fell out.  It was worse in mom’s room as several of the crystals on her chandelier light fixture fell off onto her bed and the shelves on the wall above her bed almost dropped several large avon containers onto her.  These are the old school 40’s large glass containers that weight 4 and 5 pounds apiece and would have done serious damage to her if they hit her sleeping head. 

Thankfully her windows too opened and shut smoothly.  A little while later the contractor showed up to board up the hole in our basement and just marveled at how badly damaged the foundation was.  He said he believed it was safe at least for the weekend but would need it assessed by someone more experienced than him.  At that point we’re approaching noon on Saturday.  All I have to have is the plumber fix the sewer line and I can either get Mom back or go over and visit with my brother.  I tried to wait patiently but I really had to use the bathroom myself. 

It actually took long enough that I took matters into my own hands (pun intended) and went into a corner of the backyard to ‘water the flowers’.  That still left the bowel movement and I wasn’t desperate enough to drop trow right in front of the Goddess and my neighbors.  Instead, I distracted myself with the Michigan football game.  I ended up napping a bit and was woken up around 3 o’clock by a phone call from the plumber.  I had texted him some photos earlier so that his guy could have all the equipment he needed and a problem from either his or my phone or his or my phone service sent those photos to him a second time.  And thank the Goddess for that problem as it’s the only reason he called back.  It seems that ‘second’ plumber that called was not a plumber from a different company.  It was the guy he was sending out to my house to fix my problem.  When I told them that I had a guy to fix it they both thought it was strange as it was only a few minutes between my initial conversation with the owner and then, but they were happy to not work on a Saturday.  He had the guy come back out after the football game which I thought was fair as he would have been done BEFORE the game if I hadn’t shooed him off.  He got there around 4:30.  He was gone by 4:50 with the longest portion of the job being writing up the invoice.  His few minutes of work with all the ‘extra weekend’ and ‘extra emergency’ fees was just under $400.  I didn’t even balk as the insurance company had given me carte blanche to get it fixed and I’d get reimbursed for this.  And that makes sense as without water the house is unlivable, and they’d have to put us up in a hotel. 

That was Saturday.  Monday I stayed home from work so that I could talk to the insurance adjuster and show R the damage when he got back from up north.  Halfway through the day I found out that the adjuster couldn’t make it and wouldn’t be out until the following day.  I wasn’t pleased but really didn’t have any choice.  R, when he got home, pointed out that there was more damage to the sewer line as it was right under all the damage to the wall in the basement and was likely being pushed over (behind all the junk). 

Tuesday the adjuster showed up promptly at 0830 which was great as that would leave me with enough time to get ready for work after he left.  I figured he’d walk around, take a bunch of pictures and either send over a contractor later in the week or have us hire someone ourselves.  My assumption was wrong as while I was showing him how far the cinder blocks were pushed out a contractor showed up.  It seems that it was known how upset my mom was so he was anxious to start work as soon as possible. 

The contractor and the adjuster both saw that it was very extensive damage to the house and that all of the walls in the basement room would need to be looked at.  Needless to say they couldn’t look at them right away.  Even if the junk wasn’t there, all of that cedar paneling needed to be pulled down.  I told them that I could get a crew together by the weekend to clear the room but the contractor had a better idea.  With permission from the adjuster (i.e. a nod indicated he could bill for this service) he called up a bunch of his guys and said he’d have them not only pull all the stuff out of the room but have most of the paneling pulled down later that day.  And he was a man of his word as his crew showed up about an hour later and in 8 hours had that room down to it’s bare walls.  All of the junk is now filling up our garage and will be gone through at a later date. 

Before he left, the adjuster looked at something I hadn’t considered.  He walked the path the car took through the lawn toward the parking railroad ties and saw that there was no indication the driver was even trying to stop.  The grass was matted down, but there were no skid marks where the tires were locked up, even in short bursts like ABS would do.  And the bush I marked on the map at F, half of it was sheared off.  His path was almost perfect to do as much damage as possible.  If he had come at the house a little more to the east, he would have hit the bush more centered which would have slowed him down a bit (obviously he was going fast enough to just plow through the bush!), and he would have hit the corner of the parking spot.  If that didn’t stop him outright it would have significantly slowed him down.  If he had at the house a little more to the west, he would have either hit the utility pole which surely would have stopped him or if he missed it, might have missed the house entirely and hit the tree out front. 

Instead it was like he was aiming to hit my Mom’s bedroom.

The next day the crew showed up to finish getting all the paneling out of the house so when I got home from work I saw that we were well and truly screwed.  The cracks I had seen outside and that were clearly visible on the inside could now be seen to run all the way to the basement floor.  The ENTIRE front wall of the house from a couple feet above ground to 4.5 feet below ground will need to be replaced.  And more than just the front of the house, they’ll likely have to replace the walls on the north and south sides. 

That obviously creates two problems.  First, they’re going to have to dig all the way around the front of the house.  You’d think it would be simple, but we have electricity coming into the house right where the car hit (A on the map), we have gas coming in on the west facing wall underground, and we have water coming in on the north facing wall, right across from where the electricity comes in.  In other words, there are so many pipes and conduits coming in that no machinery will be used to make sure they don’t knock those out.  All of that trenching will have to be hand dug.  The second problem is pure physics… the house will have to be supported while they replace all those walls.   If the house were of modern construction, they could evidently do that with just a few housing jacks.  But our house was built in 1936 and if they use jacks, the whole house will bend, and buckle and we’ll have cracks throughout the front of the house. 

So, the last stage was them building a temporary wall in the basement.  They finished that two days ago and are looking to start digging the trench tomorrow.  That was my past week and will likely be my next few weeks.  Even when they’re all done my brothers and I are going to take the opportunity to clean out the basement a bit.  Obviously, all the Christmas stuff and the memories we aren’t’ ready to part with yet will go back into the basement from the garage, but the rest will be thrown into a roll off dumpster.  We’ll clean out the whole basement in the same manner which will give us a LOT of room down there.  And if there’s enough room in the dumpster after all that, we’ll clean out the garage and we have two large sheds full of ‘stuff’.