Most owners insured but not covered in Ravenna flooding

Swift-moving water from a broken water main ran through Lynn Potthoff's rental house in Ravenna two weeks ago, flooding her basement and garage, and leaving behind a mound of waterlogged belongings that could cost her thousands to replace.

Potthoff, a schoolteacher, hadn't counted on that — not with a renters' insurance policy that went above and beyond the usual coverage.

But she said American Family Insurance told her that only flood insurance would cover the replacement of items damaged when 800,000 gallons of drinking water from a city water main flowed knee-deep down her street, and through her yard, house and garage for more than two hours May 19.

A spokeswoman for the state's insurance commissioner said the exclusion was allowable.

"Because it involved a flood and it occurred off the property, unless they have flood insurance, they wouldn't have coverage," Stephanie Marquis said.

Owners of most of the 14 houses affected by the break near the intersection of 24th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 80th Street similarly were denied coverage from their insurers because the flooding originated outside their property, according to neighbors who compared notes at a meeting two days after the flood.

Neighbors said they knew of only two homes where damage was covered by homeowner policies.

"It's a wake-up call for all of us about insurance," said Potthoff's neighbor Jessie Compeau, who has to replace a water-damaged floor in her studio office. "You don't expect something like this."

Potthoff would have paid about $100 a year for $25,000 worth of flood coverage, her agent said. But buying a separate flood policy to cover damage from a broken water main requires a stretch of imagination most homeowners are not likely to make, nor should they be required to, Potthoff said.

Seattle Public Utilities quickly accepted responsibility for the damage, even as it investigates the cause of the rupture.

The city does not have a program to search out leaks in its water system, but its water losses from leaks are low by industry standards: about 3.4 percent of its volume — or about 1.5 billion gallons — last year, according to utility spokesman Andy Ryan.

Since 2007, three water mains in Seattle have broken without obvious cause; a fourth was caused by a construction crew. But utility officials say the quality of pipe systemwide is good to excellent, and the city's soil is of a type that does not corrode iron quickly.

The city said it will pay private contractors to dry out houses and crawl spaces, and salvage whatever they can.

What the city won't do is pay to replace damaged furniture and other items, including the bed, dressers, luggage, shelves and other furniture waiting to be hauled from Potthoff's backyard.

Unlike insurance policies, which typically pay to replace damaged goods, the city is legally obligated to pay only what the item was worth before the flood. That leaves Potthoff on the hook for the rest of the replacement cost.

"Depreciated, this is going to be worth nothing," she said, gesturing to her soggy belongings.

Still, Potthoff and other neighbors had nothing but praise for Seattle firefighters and utility crews who pumped out water from crawl spaces, assisted homeowners and repaired damaged roadways.

The city dispatched adjusters that afternoon to help homeowners catalog items for damage claims, while private contractors sought on-the-spot contracts with homeowners to install fans, dry out items and clean up dirt and damaged goods.

One company, ServiceMaster of Seattle, said it would accept payment directly from the city for claims filed by homeowners. But people who signed contracts with the company could be responsible for charges exceeding what the city pays, said Mike Mack, owner of ServiceMaster's parent company, L & M Services.

Mack said the company tends to accept what the city pays as long as the reimbursement is reasonable.

"You can quickly spend a lot more money than the average homeowner has in their bank account," he said. Costs can run hundreds, even thousands, of dollars a day.

The utility said it first learned of the leak about 12:30 p.m., when an alarm sounded, indicating especially high flows in one of its water mains. A field worker arrived on site about 1:15 p.m.

Additional crews, using blueprints of the city's water system, worked for 75 minutes or so to turn off 10 valves on pipes feeding the main, said James McNerney, a strategic adviser with the utility.

A submerged valve near the break complicated the shutdown, forcing utility workers to branch out to other pipes.

The city thinks the cast-iron pipe was not leaking before the rupture because of the way it cracked — horizontally, and because no one had previously reported seeing water on Ravenna Avenue Northeast, McNerney said.

The city relies on such eyewitness reporting to detect leaks after abandoning its leak-inspection program several years ago, McNerney said. The program was costly, he said, and didn't provide effective information.

Leaks tend to be seen quickly because of the relatively shallow depth of pipes, McNerney said. But those depths, from 3 feet to 6 feet, also may have contributed to the pipe's cracking on a busy street traversed often by buses and trucks.

Neighbors said they could hear a thunking noise emanating from the section of road under which the pipe is located, leading to speculation that the shifting concrete pad eventually cracked the pipe.

McNerney said it's nearly impossible to account fully for the cause of the break, although a shifting road plate, if there was one, could have contributed to the problem.

The utility averages eight leaks a month, far fewer than other systems that have twice or three times as many, according to Joe Mickelson, the utility's water-operations director.

The city's executive administration department office was unable to say Monday what the break will cost the city, or what previous breaks have cost the city.

"The only way you would prevent it would be eliminating pipe of that character from the system," McNerney said, referring to the cast-iron pipes that constitute 80 percent of the drinking-water mains in the city. But, he said, "It's some of the best pipe we've got."

Susan Kelleher: 206-464-2508 or skelleher@seattletimes.com