South Ealing Explosion 20/02/11
I am a resident in the terraced houses just behind Carlyle House where the gas explosion happened on Sunday 20th February.I want to note my frustration today at the preoccupation of all the emergency services reports and news stories etc. of this blast being based around the front of the building (which was actually the back of the flat involved) and the road in front of this and not the residential homes directly behind, so have joined this forum in order to vent it. There seems to be a total failure to mention the residential homes behind the Carlyle House flats, which are directly in front of the entrance to the flat and which actually bore the brunt of the explosion damage in the end. The closest house to the flat had windows blown in and we all have damaged roof tiles and holes that it seems we probably have to face will require being repaired ourselves in the all too likely event that the man involved is proved to be the cause and has no insurance of his own. The road and park have all been cleared of debris now of course, while our our roofs and gardens still have it strewn all over them.I am obviously immensely relieved that nobody got hurt, which does indeed seem amazing and yesterday, the idea of how much worse it could have been i.e If the building had collapsed on other residents, if children had been in the playground or garden, if I had carried out my plan to do some gardening that morning, if the debris that smashed my roof tiles had landed a few cm's further over and smashed through the glass skylight onto my housemate's head as he readied himself for work below it etc. This was all that was really on my mind in the hours after the incident, but today, in the cold light of a new day I have looked closer at my damaged roof and the garden full of concrete roofing chunks, large pieces of roof tile, roofing felt plus sharp wooden shards and have wondered how I will get this fixed and cleaned up & who will in the end pay?This morning I was completely fobbed off by Ealing Homes operatives (who own and manage the block) and specifically their repairs Manager Mr. Bra who has his own structural engineers out today to inspect the block but appeared to have little or no respect to or for the surrounding houses affected and was unsympathetic, uncooperative and generally thoroughly unhelpful. Ealing Homes have point blank refused to release the basic information I require for my insurance company: the number of the flat involved, the name of the resident, the gas company involved and the name of a contact at Ealing Homes that might be used for contact by my insurance company. Yet in the event that he has no valid home insurance, I will have to pay for my repairs, which require immediate attention before any rain shower's rear their head, so need to know whether to claim via Insurance regardless or to instruct local repairers to make it watertight or fix entirely at my own very overpriced cost.My own insurance will send an assessor round of course but when it comes to requesting a structural engineer ...or somenone knowledgable to check this row of houses hasn't been structurally damaged from the blast itself, it is very clear that should this gentleman have done this on purpose, we will have little/no right to claim our repair costs back and even though many reports, including that of the gentleman from Murray Road, quoted in the Ealing Gazette report saying that there was just a dull thud, rather than a bang.I can tell you instead that from being less than 25 metres away within my home what I heard and felt that morning was no DULL thud. It was more of a loud BOOM, followed by tremors, then a pounding of matter raining from the skies onto our roofs, gardens & cars causing damage and making holes in their wake.I now have a garden full of large bits of debris and since I am left high and dry with my insurance and will have to either pay for its removal and damages myself or claim against my own home insurance and pay for it effectively next year with a higher premium.I also had no visit from any emergency services to inform me if gas was now safe, or to inspect our damage ...nothing. It surprises me I guess and I just wonder if its something anyone else has come across or if there is any legal or general advice anyone out there can give me, since at present I really cannot afford to throw hundreds of pounds on repairing the damage when someone decides to blow their home sky high! .. the crazy part being in this story is that if the blast debris had damaged my car, the insurance would surely cover the damage without requiring a third party insurance and without affecting my no claims but for the home repair requests, it seems to be the home owner who always suffers most in the end.Thanks for listening,Miss B of Carlyle Road Ealing
Lauren Bonner ● 5697d6 Comments