RICHMOND, Va. — After enduring a five-day clean water outage, the co-owner of Wishbone Food Shop in downtown Richmond is grappling with significant financial losses and frustration over her insurance claim denial.
Virginia Sowers, co-owner of the establishment, reported losses ranging from $4,000 to $6,000 per day during the outage.
“We are small and it's just the two of us. That is a huge sum of money,” Sowers said.
Sowers said she went through Hammond Insurance Services to file a claim for loss of income and spoilage due to the outage with one of its carrier agencies.
However, she was informed by an adjuster at that carrier agency that her loss would not be covered.
That adjuster cited a CBS 6 report which said fallen branches on a power line as the cause of the outage that disconnected power to the water plant.
Despite initial assessments pointing to the fallen branches, investigations have revealed that backup power sources that should have functioned failed, and a federal audit identified numerous issues at the plant in previous years.
“Oh, I was livid,” Sowers said regarding the insurance denial.
The city’s Department of Public Utilities Director resigned about a week after the outage.
"If it wasn't DPU’s fault, if it wasn't the water plant's fault, then you know, why is girl gone?” Sowers asked.
Sowers' insurance agent, Dain Hammond, described the past few days as a “nightmare” for their nearly 200 clients, including Wishbone Food Shop, who are filing claims for losses.
“If it was 24 hours, no big deal. 48 hours, it's getting tough. You get to three to four days without income, it's a problem," Hammond said.
Hammond said that Sowers’ claim appeared to be the only one he knew of being denied.
“We've had one carrier, as you know, denying claims that we're appealing and fighting. But right now, we have about eight carriers represented in Richmond, seven of the eight recovering got one carrier that I need to fight," Hammon said.
Just hours after interviewing with CBS 6, Hammond said he was able to win her appeal case and a check would be delivered to Wishbone Food Shop Friday morning.
Fighting denials and handling a mass amount of similar claims, Hammond said, has been challenging and personal to his family.
“Both my daughters work in the Richmond restaurant industry. They're both calling me. 'Are we going to get paid? How am I going to get paid?' So I hear this from the staff level," Hammond said. "So, yeah, I feel it, and this is my job, is to and these are my friends and my kids not getting paid. So yeah, that's my job, is to make sure everybody's fairly compensated.”
An interim spokesperson with the City said it is filing with the U.S. Small Business Administration in pursuit of economic injury disaster loans for small businesses and is applying to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to recover City money spent during the emergency response.
It also created a pot of funding for small businesses starting at 25,000 dollars and granted a 10-day extension for bill payments to the City.
However, Sowers fears it may not be enough for business owners who may experience what she did.
"You know, 10 days is nothing what we’ve lost, especially if we’re counting on insurance companies to, you know, to be there in the middle I guess, you would say,” Sowers said. “We’re in the city. This restaurant is kind of like an ode to the city. I was born and raised here. I love Richmond. My father was police officer for a short period of time. And I just kind of, we’re just kind of left hanging. And it doesn't, it doesn't seem right."
Hammond said he's encouraging business owners to check their insurance policy, to make sure they can be properly covered if they experience something similar in the future.
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