Memnison Journal

Sorry about being out of touch; my internet and phone were cut off for a while, and it’s been incredibly disheartening to deal with the messes from the weekend flood in our basement.

Wednesday morning was spent on the phone again, chasing after people. I arranged for a temporary storage unit to be brought to the house, much as we’d had before, but the earliest I could come was Friday. Until then, a lot of stuff would have to remain in either cluttered or precarious places, and even then, I’d have to strong-arm it out myself.
After quizzing ServiceMaster and a few carpet-cleaning places, it became pretty obvious that all the work we had done with trying to dry out the carpet was leading to two situations. The most likely was yanking the carpet and the pad, and replacing it, probably with the same floor tile used elsewhere in the basement, which meant evacuating the library / family room in the basement. If I went to the basement and pulled up some of the carpet and found the pad still damp, that would mean that all we had done with the dehumidifier and the vacuuming and the fans was to buy some time to get someone in and the carpet out (and the contents of the room with it) later on, instead of being moldy yesterday.
And late in the afternoon, after mopping out the office with a strong bleach solution, I pulled up the carpet in the wettest place…near the entrance to the office. Carpet was dry, pad was damp and smelled mildly of mildew.
Crap. Just bought ourselves some time, then. So the library will need to be emptied again, packed up and moved out. Can’t tell you how depressing that prospect is. Service Master had said that the drywall would need to be cut at least two feet above where the water line was. And the laundry room will at least need to be cleaned out with bleach and everything moved out… and my desk will have to be scrapped; I can see water swells on the particle board.
The insurers for Second Wind still haven’t gotten back to us with a go, which precludes major work on the basement….unless we want to make a claim on our insurance and point it back to Country Companies and have the insurers fight it out. It’s a mess, and we’re concerned about what our insurer will say. We doubt that they’d turn us down, it’s more that they might cancel us down the line as a ‘bad risk’.
The major hold up now is that the insurers at Country Companies have to contact Todd McConkey to tell him about the (now three) different claims against Second Wind from various people (us, a couple in Wheaton we’ve spoken to a couple of times, and someone out in LaGrange), and all the contact phone numbers we’ve had are no good. They may have to do registered mail, and wait for a response, which could take a while….and our claims would hang fire in the meantime.
Of course, all of this costs…we have an appointment with Permaseal, a basement sealing outfit, on Friday, and any remedial work they might do (along with Matt’s remedial work) won’t be covered by the contractor’s insurer, unless that completion bond shows up. So what I have to work on is getting that bond information to surface, which goes back to McConkey as well.
In the meantime, our internet access is out to lunch; there’s something hardware-wise wrong with the ISPs equipment. And my keyboard is crapping out on me…
Hope everything’s fine with y’all.

---

Thursday morning. Last night, I had an idea; what about just trying directory assistance to find his number? Nobody had thought of that. And - it worked!  I faxed off the information to The Insurance Guys and this fellow in Wheaton, and then called the number in the morning. Todd’s wife answered, asked my name and business, and gave me his cell phone. I called, got him, explained that the Insurance People needed to hear from him, told (at his request) the broad details of the flood, gave him the insurance guys contact info (at his request) and asked about the bond. He said said that the only bond that he had was with the village, and that was a whole lot less - $100.

So the following scenarios are possible:

1. He’s lying, and doesn’t want me to access the bond.
2. He lied before, when he told us there was a bond for $100,000.
3. He’s forgotten about the whole thing.

Any of the above are possible. I called the Wheaton guy and Steve Crowley at the insurer’s office to make sure they had the right info / numbers, spoke to the Wheaton guy and left a message for Crowley, who was in a meeting.

Later on in the day, I got further information on McConkey’s bankruptcy. Very messy, no money. More when I get a look at the paperwork.

Still no action today on a lot of things, regardless of numerous phone calls. No internet yet. Don’t know when this will be posted.