Volunteers pitch in to help after water floods condo

The trail of water twisted and turned from one condominium to another at Raintree West, 7950 W. Flamingo Road.

Luckily for Dolores Hrovatin, 86, not everyone agreed she should foot the bill for what appeared to be her neighbor’s water issues.

After a long absence, Hrovatin came home to mold in December 2013. She found a collapsed ceiling in her master bedroom. Her Allstate insurance policy paid its $10,000 limit on the cleanup.

But once her home was stripped, Raintree West’s insurance carrier, Community Association Underwriters of America Inc., rejected the claim, leaving her homeless.

So Summit Restoration President William Dellaechaie finished the job he’d begun.

“She’s somebody’s grandmother,” he said.

Dellaechaie enlisted Becker’s help in gathering about 100 tradespeople, addressing everything from tile to plumbing, labor and materials at no charge. Companies that helped include Earth Resource Group; Granite to Go/Kitchen Accomplished; the Water Heater Man; Red Rock Insulation; Chicago Painting Inc.; Las Vegas Flooring; Air-Care; and Belfor Property Restoration.

Hrovatin said she bought her two-bedroom, two-bath, 1,000-square-foot condo in 1993 before it was completed. She moved in with her son, who has a brain injury, in 1994. Water problems arose within the first few weeks of their arrival.

“There was a rainstorm,” she said. “Water came down the chimney, flooded the fireplace, and spilled into the living room.”

The waterlogging began in earnest at the end of 2013, when family members drove her to the house to collect Christmas items. By then, she could no longer care for her son because of her bad back.

She’d moved into a senior residence with assisted living, and placed her son, too. She and family members retrieved items from the house as needed, but no one lived there. Her hope was to move with her daughter back into the paid-off home.

Although she’d had her condo’s water shut off, she said, “we were surprised to see that the ceiling had completely fallen in the main bathroom. And that the walls had specks of mold.”

Dellaechaie said Hrovatin’s insurance agent, Brian Hambley, called him onto the scene.

“There wasn’t one area of the house that wasn’t affected,” he said. “They had a sudden and accidental water loss that took out roughly 80 percent, 90 percent, of the unit. We believe it was a toilet supply line upstairs.”

The situation worsened when it came time for insurance. Dellaechaie’s understanding was that Hrovatin’s insurance, Allstate, would pay $10,000, which satisfied the HOA master policy deductible. And, the HOA would file a claim.

Hambley did not return phone calls by deadline to confirm those details.

But Anthony Scaletta, who arrived on the scene as Allstate’s independent adjuster at the outset, confirmed that the company OK’d coverage up to the limit of liability, $10,000, and paid it.

Approximately 80 percent of the work was complete, according to Dellaechaie, when the HOA’s insurance denied the claim.

The denial letter from Community Association Underwriters of America Inc. says that at least one other unit had been affected, and that damages were “the result of repeated leakage and seepage from the poorly maintained shower-tub grout and caulking in the bathroom” of the unit above. Mold, long-term leaks and maintenance issues aren’t covered, according to the letter.

Bruce Flammey, attorney for Raintree West HOA, said “seepage from grout in the shower area” was the culprit. And, “it’s the unit owner’s responsibility to keep an eye on that.”

Jennifer Drase, the independent adjuster who investigated on behalf of the HOA’s insurance carrier, didn’t see grout failure. Her first inspection took place on April 17, 2014. Two days later, she and Dellaechaie inspected Hrovatin’s unit and the unit above, running the shower and flushing the toilet above, and then watching what happened downstairs.

Scaletta added, “The damage we saw downstairs would appear to be greater than anything we would expect from any kind of grout failure.”

“Their reasoning was that it was a long-term leak,” Dellaechaie said. “Most of the people involved in the job up to that point didn’t agree with that.”

Nevada Revised Statutes 116 predicates that the HOA’s insurance is primary, and its adjuster should have been the first on the scene before it was “spoiled,” said John Drase, owner of Drase Adjusting Services Inc., and Jennifer Drase’s father.

But following that directive might have been moot for Hrovatin anyway. In 2011, KTNV-TV, Channel 13 reported on yet another Raintree West homeowner dealing with mold caused by water from a toilet pipe break in another unit. She watched the problem worsen, while the HOA’s insurance carrier, Philadelphia Insurance, and the owner of the offending unit, Fannie Mae, moved slowly, according to the report. Her own insurance held off, waiting on the others, and neighbors worried about the problem spreading.

“Although our home is now intact thanks to Will, we’ve been unable to obtain any information from HOA about the surrounding units,” Hrovatin’s daughter, Diane, said. “What if the mold comes back to our unit because of the other apartments?”

In the meantime, Dolores Hrovatin,who picked out her own donated cabinets, and was given a new water heater, said she’s been “treated like a queen.”