Insurance
Office helps parish recover from flood
By Lou Baldwin
Special to The CS&T
LEVITTOWN — Last year at this time, the Church of
St. Michael the Archangel was in trouble, even if, on the
surface the edifice looked as beautiful as ever.
The trouble was 35 feet below the surface, in sub-basements
that housed the building’s mechanical infrastructure.
On May 8, after a period of rain, water unexpectedly began
to gush in at an estimated 1,000-gallons-an-hour.
As the water rose, the building lost its electrical system
and its heating and cooling systems. Summer was just coming
in, and the ruined boilers would not be a problem in May,
but they would have to be replaced before the heating season.
One level above, the parish hall beneath the church was
not flooded, but the high humidity caused mildew to form,
making the facility unusable without extensive rehabilitation.
Engineers were called in. It took months just to locate
the sources of the problem, according to Father Michael
DiIorio, pastor of St. Michael the Archangel Parish. The
real cause of the sudden underground leak has never been
pinpointed with certainty, although there have been theories
— for example, leakage from a nearby canal.
Whatever its cause, the damage had to be remedied. Repairs
worth $2.3 million were required, according to Father DiIorio,
and they would have to be paid for.
Father DiIorio did what every pastor does in such a situation.
He contacted the Archdiocesan Insurance Department. For
minor insurance claims, the Archdiocese is self-insured.
But this was hardly minor.
Archdiocesan Office for Insurance Services worked with the
insurer, Lloyds of London, and the New York-based broker,
Waldorf and Associates. Claims were quickly settled and
work began.
In the meantime, although the basement parish hall was unusable
for the year, no religious services in the church, itself,
had to be cancelled because emergency generators provided
electrical power, Father DiIorio said.
The basements are once again sealed and dry, but because
there is no way to be absolutely certain a similar underground
flood could never happen again, all the new equipment was
installed above ground.
One year later, everything is finished — and paid
for almost entirely through insurance.
Father DiIorio gives full credit to the archdiocesan Office
for Insurance Services for that.
“They were totally knowledgeable,” he said.
“They were absolutely wonderful — extremely
supportive, very informative and totally available. This
shows how the diocese is a family that works together —
the administrators with the pastors.”
St. Michael’s experience is really typical of what
his office does, said Charles Debevec, director of the Office
for Insurance Services. Several branches of the Secretariat
for Temporal affairs — Finance/Accounting, Property
Services and Insurance — all cooperate as a unit.
“We like to stay in the background,” Debevec
said. “We don‘t make the decisions as to how
the parish should make repairs. When something goes wrong,
we try to make the work go as seamlessly as possible. We
are there to make parishes whole, as covered by insurance.”
Certainly St. Michael’s was a major claim but there
have been others just as major, he noted. Because the Archdiocese
is large, he said, insurance carriers realize claims can
sometimes also be large, and they work with it to settle
the claims.
The most trying aftermath of the damage for St. Michael’s
parishioners was the lack of air-conditioning last summer
and uneven heat from temporary heaters during the winter,
said Jim Phillips, a parish pastoral council member.
“Father kept us informed of the progress every week,
and the people were happy about that,” Phillips said.
“Now we have air-conditioning, heat and the use of
the hall again. I think the people are satisfied. I know
my family is.”
Rita Danhardt remembers the flood well. It occured on the
closing day for CCD, and 400 children and parents were to
use the parish hall. The church could not be used instead,
because of the power outage. The event had to be switched
to another building.
“Now we have our hall back and it looks beautiful,”
she said. “We have heat and air-conditioning. Everything
is great.”
Lou Baldwin is a member of St. Leo Parish and a freelance
writer.
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