Insurance Fight: Family Still Not Back In Home After Snow Damage Two Winters Ago

This weekend’s Bottom Line column:

Ron and Cristine Kern of Marlborough. (Stephen Dunn/The Hartford Courant)

In the most optimistic scenario, Cristine and Ron Kern will move back into their Marlborough split-level ranch sometime in mid-October, the storm damage repaired.

Curious storm trackers, of course, are already wondering which storm penetrated the Kerns’ interior walls and window frames, cracked ceilings throughout the house, buckled cedar-shake siding, left the roof sagged and unsafe, caused structural damage to three sides of the house and required both mold and lead abatement.

Was it early August’s freak rain or, more likely, last October’s doubly freaky snow-ice combination and subsequent power outage? Or maybe Hurricane Irene in August 2011?
No, the Kerns are still locked in the cleanup from the monster winter of 2010-11, when a monthly-record 54.9 inches dropped in January 2011. A daily-record snowfall, 21.9 inches, set that month lasted only until Feb. 9, when 22.5 inches fell in Windsor Locks and 29 in Meriden. Roofs across the state buckled, even collapsed. More commonly, water from ice dams penetrated to the core of a home’s construction.

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