A drunk driver crashed into our yard...insurance questions..

[tiggger1]

morning ladies. It has been a crazy morning here. Early this morning around 1 am, I hear a noise and wake just as the power going out. Then there was a huge bang..I look out the window and see a car take out 2 mailboxes, our telephone pole ( which in turn took ripped the power out of our house and landed in the bushes in our front yard. I couldnt call 911 because it was so dark I couldnt find the cell phones.. thankfully my neighbor called but a cop was coming down the road and saw it right after it happened. the noise woke up emma and she was freaked out because the electrical meter is right outside her window...I finally get her to calm down on the couch and go outside to make sure everyone was ok. Turned out the chick was drunk..( you could smell the beer on her breath 5 feet away) she was fine. She was crying and being conforted by the a lady in a car had stopped after the accident. She told the cop she just happened on the accident but it turned out she was with following her home ( the drunk one was following the drunker one home to make sure she got home ok... dont you love drunk logic! ) The cop saw them together a few minutes earlier..The lady that crashed got arrested and the other lady got her car impounded and brought in to the station because she was in no shape to drive.

After they left, we had to wait for the electric company to come and cut the power. The pole wasnt theirs ( it was verizon's) so they just disconnected the power and said they would come back in the morning because there was damage to the electric box and the wires on the house and they couldnt touch that, we needed to find an electrician. thankfully FIL is one and came this morning. After they disconnected power we had to wait for a verizon manager to show up to check out the pole and determine that it needed to be replaced? ( she drove THROUGH it) she called in a crew and also called comcast to come out. They showed up a few hours later and it took them until 5:30 am to get it up. Then the electric company came back around 7:30 and reconnected the power to the street and stayed until my fil who had to go pull a permit to fix it. We had to pay to reconnect also...

Hubby is calling our insurance company because she did so much damage.. The cop told up to keep all reciepts and have her pay for all damages.. the bushes she killed, plus the mailbox, the damage to the electrical, plus the house where it pulled off, plus what we had to pay to reconnect the power. He told us we could probably have her insurance pay for the food that went bad in the fridge ( no power for over 8 hours).
after we got the power back on hubby tried to log on to work to tell him he was working from home and found out the outage blew up our desktop..so hubby is pissed...it also took his business down ( he does webhosting) for 8 hours...

anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[MAKmom]

Take pictures before everything is clean up.

We had a car drive into our showroom a few months back.

 

[Rafiki Rafiki Rafiki]

Crimonies! That's awful! And so preventable.

Did the girl have insurance? I suspect if you take the police report to your homeowners insurance company, they'll take care of dealing with her.

Your Emma is VERY CUTE, btw!

 

[debbi801]

Take lots of pictures of everything. And be prepared for a tough road:

My parents' house was driven into by a drunk driver October 2000. The house was condemned due to the amount of structural damage. The house was rebuilt through my parents' home owners insurance after battling over what they would cover, picking contractors, etc. The guy got basically a smack on the wrist.

My parents had to go after him directly to cover paying for someplace for them to live for the almost 2 years (while inspectors determined that their house needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, etc.), paying to replair furniture, fix photographs that got saturated from the radiator exploding from impact, medical bills due to getting hurt trying to evacuate the house, etc.

They were still battling it out when my dad died March 2008. My mom finally settled in August. She was tired of fighting, especially with my dad being gone (and his illness was aggravated by this accident).

 

[SplshMtn99]

You should file under HER car insurance. Her policy has coverage for damage to others property.

 

[debster812]

Call the non-emergency number for your local PD. Ask if you can come get a copy of the report. With that, you'll have her insurance info, and can file a claim with them.

Last year, in the space of 2 months, we had two different people miss the curve on our road, take out our mailbox, push down some trees, and tear up a little bit of landscaping.

They payout that we got from the guilty party's insurance was MORE than enough to pay for the damages caused.

 

[RitaZ.]

Take lots of pictures of everything. And be prepared for a tough road:

My parents' house was driven into by a drunk driver October 2000. The house was condemned due to the amount of structural damage. The house was rebuilt through my parents' home owners insurance after battling over what they would cover, picking contractors, etc. The guy got basically a smack on the wrist.

My parents had to go after him directly to cover paying for someplace for them to live for the almost 2 years (while inspectors determined that their house needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, etc.), paying to replair furniture, fix photographs that got saturated from the radiator exploding from impact, medical bills due to getting hurt trying to evacuate the house, etc.

They were still battling it out when my dad died March 2008. My mom finally settled in August. She was tired of fighting, especially with my dad being gone (and his illness was aggravated by this accident).

OMG, what an ordeal!

OP, thankfully, you're all safe. I would pursue this and make sure you fight to get every single penny reimbursed. If the insurance company gives you the run around, then you should retain an attorney immediately.

That idiot is lucky she didn't kill anyone. Make her pay and maybe she'll learn her lesson.

 

[Violet Crayon]

I hope everything can be fixed!

When I was a teen someone crashed into a small tree in our yard, swerved, and then crashed into the tail light/bumper of our car. We were all gone at the time but came back to find the mangled tree, glass in the drive, and the broken tail light. My mother called the police (we lived in a smalll village in Michigan) and they told her what had happened. When we inquired how it was going to be covered and who was going to pick up the mess, we were told there was nothing they were supposed to do, it was our problem. That leaves me fuming to this day. We didn't have a lot of money so my parents didn't pursue anything but our uncle does the insurance so he did something to get us money to cover the tail light (why we were never given the perp's insurance info, I don't know).

 

[Hillbeans]

Take lots of pictures of everything. And be prepared for a tough road:

My parents' house was driven into by a drunk driver October 2000. The house was condemned due to the amount of structural damage. The house was rebuilt through my parents' home owners insurance after battling over what they would cover, picking contractors, etc. The guy got basically a smack on the wrist.

My parents had to go after him directly to cover paying for someplace for them to live for the almost 2 years (while inspectors determined that their house needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, etc.), paying to replair furniture, fix photographs that got saturated from the radiator exploding from impact, medical bills due to getting hurt trying to evacuate the house, etc.

They were still battling it out when my dad died March 2008. My mom finally settled in August. She was tired of fighting, especially with my dad being gone (and his illness was aggravated by this accident).

OH my gosh, what a terrible situation - I am so sorry.

Tigger - sounds like you've gotten a lot of good advice. Sorry you are going through this, and i'm glad you and the family are ok.

 

[lovesmurfs]

In November 2005, we had a lady who had lied to her physician about her seizures (she was 26 years old) have a seizure on the road behind our house. She jumped the curb, drove through our wooden privacy fence, the chain link fence, our kids' swingset (Rainbow....$$$), and into our brick garage, stopped only by the car that I'd parked there 20 minutes before. She had just had her license returned after having it revoked for a year because of the seizures....she'd admitted to the police that she'd had one a few weeks previously....so it was totally preventable.

We discovered many things during our 2 months of cleanup. First, do take pictures. We didn't need them, but if we did, they would have been helpful.

We called our insurance company, and our adjuster handled everything through the driver's insurance company. Our premiums did not increase because of the accident. We also found out that a car is a car when driving on a road, but it is property when it's parked in your garage.

For us, we kept a sense of humor and realized we would be inconvenienced for a while. It was a blessing for us, because it allowed us to have a "man door" put in the garage -- before it was just the garage door. Our garage door, which I'd miraculously put down when I'd parked (normally I leave it up when I come home), needed to be replaced anyway, so we got one for free. We also had to have a new roof put on the garage because of the damage, so we contracted with the company to do our house as well (we were within a year or two of having to replace it).

They were willing to pay for a new swingset, but we just replaced what needed to be replaced (we were very close to her per-incident maximum on the policy).

Just start a file and keep good records. Work with your insurance company. Praise the Lord that no one was hurt.

And keep your sense of humor. Everytime I see a chase scene on a TV show or movie, I think of the accident, and state to anyone around that they never show the cleanup from those chase scenes!

 

[Cheshire Figment]

The simplest thing for you to do is deal with your homeowners insurance company. They should cover your expenses except for deductibles and items that might not be covered. They will then work with her (or really her auto insurance company) to recover all the amounts they paid out plus your out of pocket expenses (such as the deductibles) which they will then forward to you.

For something like this your insurance company will be working for you; all there payments will be covered.