Metro

Homeowners face insurer sandbagging

Red tape, denied claims and all manners of bureaucratic inertia await thousands of homeowners trying to piece their lives together post-Sandy with the help of insurers, industry insiders warn.

Thomas Sullivan, a 9/11 hero and a major in the Army Reserves, is in the fight of his life battling Travelers Insurance over the loss of his $635,000 Breezy Point, Queens, home.

“I haven’t brought an engineer to look at my house to tell me, ‘It’s done,’ because if he was to come here, he would say, ‘Why are you calling me?’ ” Sullivan, 41, said dejectedly as he sifted through the rubble.

Sullivan guided a dozen people to safety on 9/11 before the South Tower fell, and his efforts won him the Soldier’s Medal, the military’s highest award for heroism in noncombat situations.

As a financial planner, he is meticulous at paying bills — so he was shocked Oct. 23 when he was told his flood insurance had lapsed.

He said that he remembered mailing the payment weeks earlier and that he only found out about the problem when his home-mortgage company, not Travelers, called him.

When he called Travelers, he said, his agent told he’d have to wait 30 days before he could “reinstate” his policy. Sandy struck six days later.

“We are checking into the situation,” said a spokesman for Travelers.

Meanwhile, scores of other homeowners will be in for a different kind of rude awakening when dealing with their insurers.

Those trying to get money to replace the damaged contents of their homes — such as the now-ruined refrigerator they bought four years ago — will be hit with “25, 35, 40 percent cuts on the settlement because of depreciation,” said Greg Raab of the National Association of Public Insurance Adjusters.

Public adjusters can be hired by homeowners to argue on their behalf, but they typically take a 10 to 12 percent cut of any settlement.

Still, Kevin Clifford, whose Breezy Point house was nearly destroyed by Sandy, said adjusters get action.

“When Irene came, I hired a [public] adjuster because our insurance company offered us $500. When I got the adjuster, he got me $28,000,” said Clifford, 50. “This time, my insurance company said, ‘Please don’t hire a private adjuster.’ Now they’re coming to see me, but they weren’t until I threatened them with an adjuster.”

Flood and many kinds of other water damage are generally excluded from coverage unless the homeowner has a separate flood- insurance policy.