We’ve all heard of the terrifying power of nature, but few comprehend the terror and impotence a person feels when nature strikes—the roar of pure, unstoppable fury that freezes time and movement, stripping away and shattering in seconds everything you have built and worked for; everything you love.
That was how it happened for the Simpson family.
It was a normal Saturday morning in Waihi Beach, three weeks after the family moved into their new home. Chris Simpson was in his home office while Dani and their daughter Emma were upstairs. A sudden wall of wind and laterally-driven rain bearing down on the house made Chris look up.
Alarmed, Chris dashed upstairs to get Dani and Emma, and the family took shelter in the concrete block garage. “Initially, I thought it was a tsunami because of the overwhelming volume of water and sand, but the pressure… the pressure on your ears is incredible.”
The family spent 20 – 30 seconds helpless and fearing for their lives in the middle of a tornado—not something many people survive. The experience was so intense that Chris still gets nightmares a year later.
Dani recalls she was lying in bed that morning talking to Emma about plans for the day when she looked out the window and wondered why the sand was blowing sideways.
“It was really noisy, and Chris came in yelling for us to go downstairs,” says Dani. “I thought he was overreacting, but as we were going downstairs, Emma yelled that she could see a hole in the bathroom floor and through it the sky.
“That’s when I thought maybe he wasn’t overreacting after all.”
Chris describes the experience of confronting death with his family as terrifying and visceral—instinctive and gut deep. “It left us with PTSD, which time will fix, but the sheer mix of raw emotions in the aftermath is unreal.”
Once outside, they found that the storm was so localised that a glasshouse 20 metres from the house was untouched, but their house roof was gone, the trusses were destroyed, and the joinery was torn apart.
The aftermath
A tornado can shred your life in 30 seconds, but it can take years to recover.
The Simpsons had to confront a bewildering onslaught of emergency services, insurance assessors, insurance claim complexities, and engineers.
“It’s a lonely, frustrating and confusing experience because there seem to be so many agendas in play,” says Chris.
“To begin with, we were told the damage was cosmetic, but we could see it was more than that—the tornado had moved the house five degrees from square. It literally moved the house.”
Who to trust?
Not knowing what to do next and who they could trust, the family turned to Construction Cost Consultants. The firm was on site within days and for the first time, says Dani; it felt like they had finally found somebody who was in their corner.
“It was refreshing to have an informed, expert team on site who could give us an opinion that was based on their experience with hundreds of similar properties. It was only then that I began to feel like we were regaining control and that somebody was looking after our interests.”
The process
Construction Cost Consultants first did a retrospective sum insured costing, which established that the sum insured for the property would not cover the costs of a complete replacement, which is typically a problem for 85% of New Zealand properties.
While the family (rightly) initially calculated the replacement value of their 200 sqm home at $4,200 per sqm—and insured it for that amount—the issue is more subtle. For example, you cannot rebuild your home squarely on the old site because of problems like potential changes in ground conditions, structural stability of the land, and changes to the building code and regulations. In most cases, costs will be higher.
The challenges keep on coming
To make matters worse, Chris broke his back shortly after. “We had heavy, constant rains that year and on one particular day, I hurried back to the house to make sure the tarp was still covering the house (which still had furniture inside it). I slipped on the wet deck and broke my back.”
Surviving a disaster, PSTD, a broken back, living in temporary accommodation and having your life on hold while also dealing with geotechnical and engineering reports (and increasing costs) would break most people. It’s an emotional storm that just keeps coming, but the Simpsons are getting through—there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
The road ahead
The claim progressed relatively quickly once Construction Cost Consultants came on board because they provided the insurance company with the necessary information, the right information, and the expert information that the insurers could trust.
“They knew what the insurers were looking for and what needed to be done to get approval—including the insurance valuation and damage report. They knew the right people,” says Chris.
“We would have been enormously out of pocket if Construction Cost Consultants had not intervened on our behalf.”
