The Sun Gazette reports…
Ten days after Hurricane Ida, Brooke Henderson found herself weeping at her backyard burn pit in Chester County, watching most of her first hemp crop billow up in white smoke like a big bong.
Ida dumped seven inches of water over many hours on Sept. 1, 2021. But disaster for Brooke and Glen Henderson struck within the first 30 minutes when an overwhelmed septic system spewed hundreds of gallons of sewage into the couple’s basement, contaminating the 340 pounds of hemp drying in bins and personal belongings, as well as bowing the basement wall.
“I had just lost everything. I was working and crying for days,” Henderson said after watching her he
mp crop go up in smoke on her four-acre Cochranville property.
Ida may be a weather footnote from last summer for many. But for homeowners such as the Hendersons, the storm marked just the beginning of a trench battle with the insurance industry that painfully lingers — in the Hendersons’ situation, with the added heartbreak of watching sewage destroy their first commercial crop.
There are no hard figures on how many families and individuals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are still dealing with Ida claims and repairs. But eight months after the deluge, upset homeowners are not hard to find.
David Buono, deputy commissioner of the Pennsylvania Insurance Department, ran into about 50 local residents with Ida-damaged properties at a town hall meeting in Upper Dublin on May 5. Some of them also wept while recounting hard negotiations with insurers that haven’t paid claims, or had cut damage estimates dramatically.
Buono implored them to file complaints with his state agency.
Families lost houses, roofs, antiques, rugs and heirlooms in a swath of devastation from Ida after the hurricane came ashore Aug. 29 in Louisiana with 150-mph winds and spun northward, kicking up tornadoes. The storm caused $65 billion in damage, according to Christian Aid, a U.K. group that tracks damage caused by climate change.
In Southeastern Pennsylvania, Ida destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes and caused more than $100 million in public infrastructure damage across the state, officials said a week after the storm. Storm waters covered Main Street in Manayunk and the Vine Street Expressway in Center City. It flooded the lower level of the fabled Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford and wrecked the Pickering West water treatment plant near Phoenixville, nearly causing a drinking-water catastrophe for Philly’s suburbs.
Totaling up the storm’s damage
Brooke Henderson had harvested the hemp crop — which can be processed into thousands of products including food, textiles, construction materials, oils, and the dietary supplement CBD — days before the storm. And it was drying in bins in their basement when Ida hit.
The couple estimated their total Ida damage at about $198,000, including the $80,000 in lost hemp. Donegal Mutual Insurance Group cut the claim to $105,000, both sides say in court papers. And so far, the firm has paid only $25,600.
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