For five weeks, Dianna Gavros has watched her home appliances burn, her basement flood and her furniture disappear.
She has seen her southwest suburban Bolingbrook home become infested with mice and has been scared by workmen threatening to slap mechanic`s liens on her house for unpaid bills.
Last week, drained of money and patience, she walked into the Bolingbrook Police Department and pleaded with the desk officer to arrest her so she and her three sons could eat and have a place to live.
The officer refused.
Gavros shakes her head in disbelief and said of her life of late, ”It has been a nightmare.”
The trouble for the 35-year-old woman started Aug. 13, as she was sitting in her kitchen feeding her 2-year-old son. At about 10 a.m., she was startled by an explosion and saw flames shooting from beneath her refrigerator. Then she heard her two other sons, aged 13 and 15, screaming about a fire in the basement.
”I went down there and all I saw was a lot of steam shooting from broken water pipes,” she said. ”I got everybody together and out of the house.”
Outside, Gavros learned that a crew laying wire in her back yard for a new Bolingbrook cable television system had sliced into an underground Commonwealth Edison Co. cable, sending an intense surge of electricity flowing through her home. The surge destroyed every appliance that was plugged in, including her refrigerator, freezer, washer, dryer, television and microwave oven.
When the surge reached the water heater downstairs, it met up with water pipes and then traveled throughout the house`s plumbing. It burst a hot water pipe downstairs, popped faucet handles off and cracked two toilet tanks. No other houses were damaged by the surge.
Five weeks after the disaster, Gavros` home still is unlivable. Sewage covers her basement floor, and the air reeks of mildew. Mice, who crawled through windows opened so the basement could dry, now brazenly pop their heads through stove burners on her gas range.
In all, Gavros and her lawyer estimate that the few seconds of the electric surge that turned her house into a scene out of a Hollywood horror movie did $40,000 in damage.
But now Gavros is facing another horror. For weeks, she has wandered through a maze of lawyers, insurance agents and adjusters as well as officials of the cable company, Schatz Underground Cable Co., of Pacific, Mo., and officials of the Bolingbrook cable TV company that hired Schatz, American Cablesystems Midwest. All she wants, she said, is ”to get my family back together and get back to my home.”
Since the accident, Gavros and her three sons have floated from relative to relative, borrowing food, money and living space. At one point, one of her sons was living with his father and stepmother in Aurora, the other was living with an aunt in Naperville and Gavros and her youngest son were staying with Gavros` parents in Lyons.
After delays caused by confusion and questions about whose insurance would cover the repairs, Roy Heffernan, American Cablesystems general manager in Bolingbrook, said arrangements have been made to have Schatz`s insurance company reimburse Gavros for the damages. But after weeks of waiting and fending off angry workmen, Gavros said she`ll believe it when she sees the check.
”It`s scary,” she said. ”You`re the innocent victim, but nobody`s there to help. The insurance companies bicker back and forth and blame each other, but I`m still living like this.”
At first, despite the great damage, repairing Gavros` house seemed easy enough. Gavros figured she`d have the necessary repairs done and that the responsible party, Schatz or American Cablesystems, would cover the expenses. Both companies cleared Commonwealth Edison of fault in the accident.
But the Schatz workers did not report the accident, Heffernan says, and he first heard of it days later when a suburban newspaper reporter called to question him.
The failure by the Schatz crew was ”totally irresponsible,” Heffernan said, and led to early confusion. It postponed notifying insurance
representatives for Schatz and American Cablesystems. That led to confusion by the workmen when, they say, they were told that neither Gavros` insurance nor the two companies` insurance would pay for the repairs.
After five weeks, the workmen say they`re tired of waiting for their money.
”All I know is I`ve got $1,200 worth of materials in that house that I paid for out of my own pocket,” said Bill Rygh, a Downers Grove plumber who said he and the other workmen have gotten ”the runaround.”
Rick Sitarz, owner of RJS Heating and Air Conditioning of Lemont, who is still owed about $3,600, said, ”Nobody wants to pay. I don`t know what`s going on.”
Heffernan said that after he learned of the accident, he apologized to Gavros and wrote three checks totalling $2,936. The money was to pay Rygh, Sitarz and an electrician for initial repairs. Heffernan wrote another check for $245 to set Gavros and her sons up in a motel and to pay for food. He also wrote her a letter saying American Cablesystems ”will be totally responsible” for the damages.
But when the money ran out and still no progress had been made in resolving the insurance matter, Gavros said she thinks Heffernan lost interest in the case.
Gavros said she was upset because she still was owed more than $9,000 for the ruined appliances. Also, the house needed further repairs to make it livable. Complicating matters, about $2,500 in furniture and belongings that Gavros and her sons had moved from the damaged downstairs to the back yard were stolen one night.
M`Linda Lugo, Gavros` sister who has helped her since the accident, said Heffernan ”called up and said, `I`m washing my hands of it.` ” Lugo owns a Naperville labor brokerage company that hired the plumber, electrician and heating contractor to work on Gavros` home. As part of the deal, Lugo receives 10 percent of the repair bill. Heffernan has questioned that arrangement and said it has complicated insurance dealings.
Heffernan denied saying he would ”wash his hands” of the case. He said his company, Schatz and Schatz`s insurance company ”were willing to resolve this very quickly.” But he said the case grew complicated when Gavros`
Chicago lawyer, Arcadio Jun Joaquin Jr., filed an attorney`s lien on the case, requiring all communication to flow through him.
Now, even with an end to the confusion apparentlty in sight, Heffernan said it will take weeks to process the insurance claim through Schatz`s insurance company. But he said Gavros` wait is largely the fault of her own lawyer`s slow handling of the case.
Joaquin explained the delay, saying, ”This is no small claim. It involves thousands of dollars. These things take time.”
As Gavros waits for her money, she and her sons are washing floors, drying wet carpet and otherwise working their house back into shape. They have set mousetraps in the kitchen, near the Styrofoam cooler that serves as their refrigerator.
And Gavros repeated what she has been saying since the start of the whole ordeal: ”I just want to get my life back in order.”
