My husband was in a very serious accident at home while inspecting our pole building roof for damage from a storm we had in the spring of 2000. He fell through the roof and had to be life flighted. He suffered very severe injuries and will never be the same again. While he was in the hospital, I called Allstate to see if my policy covered anything. Allstate told me over the phone that nothing was covered. They never even came to check out the damage to the roof, which had a 6 foot hole at the peak.
So I had contractors come to my home and give me estimates for a new roof. I finally came up with the money to have the roof put on. The new steel roof went up in August of 2000. This year in March the new roof collapsed due to a wind and ice storm. I called Allstate and made my very first claim on the roof. The adjuster came out, looked at everything and told me that he wanted an engineer to come look at the building.
I received the engineer's report. The engineer claims the trusses were built wrong and the nails holding the trusses together were too small. He also stated that the roof with the small nails would not support the 15 inches of snow that was on the roof at the time of collapse. I have searched all the National Weather Service databases, and the most accumulation I could find for that area of Pennsylvania on that date was maybe 5 inches of snow.
The engineer's report also had no mention of the wind gusts we had that day. I have a meteorologist on standby with signed statements that there was nowhere near that amount of snow on the ground in March.
I had sent the trouble report from the electric company stating that my electric line had been blown down. I also hired a landscape company to clean up the large tree limbs and a large tree that had blown over. I sent all this information to Allstate, and they still denied my claim.
My question is: why did you insure my building for 10 years, and every time I called you for help you always found an excuse not to cover my losses? Or, in my husband's case, have the decency to check out the building? Why did you not question the trusses when you first came to our property before giving us our policy in 1995? Allstate, you just wanted my money! And now you are canceling my policy because of an increase in hazard. I would like to know how you, the employees, sleep at night.
I found out that if I had had Nationwide or State Farm, my loss would have been covered. Yes, I have to handle all this on my own, because my husband's injuries are so severe that he is like a child. I pray none of this ever happens to any of your families, Allstate!
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