Community News

A year after Superstorm Sandy, still homeless in Bellmore

With their house razed, Len Drive couple fight their insurance company

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When Superstorm Sandy submerged Len Drive in south Bellmore last Oct. 29, it was particularly cruel to the home of David and Rona Weiss, who are in their mid-60s and bought their 2,450-square-foot high ranch in 1983.

Sandy’s floodwaters breached the Weisses’ downstairs, soaking their belongings in a pool of murky, brown saltwater. When Rona returned home after the storm, she found her wedding dress and album floating across her downstairs.

The Weisses’ cleanup contractor removed more than three feet of water by lifting a bathroom toilet and letting it flow into the sewer. When workers started ripping up linoleum tiles downstairs, they discovered a spider’s web of cracks –– some hairline, others deep –– radiating across the cement floor and up the foundation walls. In one section, the floor collapsed into a small pit.

The Weisses could not return to their house, they were told. It was uninhabitable and would have to come down.

Now it is gone, and their 60-by-100-foot lot is barren except for weeds. The couple are living in a rented house in Levittown, hoping to begin building a new home soon, but they are uncertain when they will be able to.

The past year, Rona said, has pushed the Weisses to their limits. “You think you’re crazy,” she said. “You think this can’t be happening.”

An earth-movement exclusion in the Weisses’ National Flood Insurance policy, which they first purchased 30 years ago, has held up their insurance settlement for nearly a year. Estimates are that the Weisses’ home would cost $430,000 to rebuild. Their flood insurance is supposed to cover $323,000 in structural and personal property damage, according to David. But Travelers has fought the claim virtually from the time it was filed, shortly after the storm last year.

The earth-movement exclusion, which was included in the revised National Flood Insurance Program of 2012 and affected hundreds of New Yorkers after Sandy, states, in essence, that flood insurance will not cover a home if its foundation shifts during a storm –– even if floodwaters cause the shift.

The clause was written into the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, which altered the NFIP after Hurricane Katrina caused an estimated $50 billion in insured losses and wiped out the NFIP’s contingency fund in 2005.

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