Residents in this Fort Worth neighborhood still picking up pieces after winter storm
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Is Texas’ power grid ready for another winter storm?
Nearly a year has passed since February’s winter storm, but the debate over how to prevent another electricity crisis rages on.
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The power finally restored, so Jeff Hencken hopped in his silver Volvo and started the 48-mile trek to check on his family’s home in far west Fort Worth.
Only two days earlier, record cold temperatures had overwhelmed the state’s power grid and left 70% of Texans — including the Henckens — without heat and electricity. The family had found refuge at the home of Jeff’s mother-in-law in Richardson.
Back home, he opened the door, stepped inside and was brought to tears.
“Our house is ruined,” Amy Hencken remembers her husband saying over FaceTime.
She remembers how she laughed: “What are you talking about?”
“It is ruined,” he said.
Water had burst from a frozen pipe in an upstairs bathroom, flooding the carpet and soaking through the floor and into the drywall. The ceiling below had collapsed.
In a video Jeff shot, water rushes throughout the house as if someone had turned on a shower.
As soon as she got off the phone with Jeff, Amy said, she called their insurance agent. They filed a claim the same day.
Their claim was one of 32,630 submitted by Tarrant County residents in the 40 days following the storm, according to data from the Texas Department of Insurance. The storm resulted in 456,531 claims across the state with an estimated $8.2 billion in insured losses. Nearly 82% of those claims were from residential properties.
Residential claims that were closed by the end of March were done in about 16 days, according to the Department of Insurance. But the Henckens’ claim has yet to close. Their past 10 months have been marked by a plethora of adjusters, three living accommodations, over $200,000 in damage and countless arguments with insurance about what’s covered, Amy said.
Their experience highlights the complicated insurance process and serves a reminder that no one gives you a road map for how to deal with it.
“I would have rather my house been torn down by a tornado or burnt to the ground because then I wouldn’t have had a fight with what was damaged and what wasn’t,” Amy said.
The funny thing about February’s storm, the family’s neighbor Riff Wright said, was that unlike damage from a fire or tornado, you couldn’t see the destruction from the street. Wright’s home also sustained damage. His claim has yet to close, too, he said, though it’s on its way to completion.
Lost Creek Estates, an older neighborhood with an Aledo ZIP code, comes with space between houses not seen in the newer developments that have popped up around the county. It was home to Lost Creek Golf Club before it closed in 2018. A vacant building, yellow caution signs bearing silhouettes of golf carts, and 72 acres of green space are all that remain.
The damage to the rest of the neighborhood isn’t quite clear, though dumpsters parked outside houses usually indicate which ones have damage, Wright said. He guessed between 12 and 15 houses are waiting to be fixed.
Amy said her neighbor’s water heater fell through the ceiling. The neighbor, she said, chose to move out of their home and sell it once renovations were completed.
Five lines broke in Wright’s home. The water rushed through the ceiling, into the newly renovated kitchen and flooded the first floor.
Wright said he’s been through at least four adjusters. The biggest complication has been the different ways contractors and insurance calculate damage and how to pay for it.
He said insurance gave him $30,000 to cover all his damage. It ended up costing four times that amount, Wright said, and he had to hire a public adjuster to negotiate.
At the Henckens’ house, mold sprouted on the studs. They struggled to figure out what was covered and what wasn’t after they received money from their insurance company.
“Nobody came through and walked through this is how it’s gonna go,” Amy said. “Like if that’s what the rules are, send somebody out and explain to somebody how it’s gonna work, but they don’t do that. They just give you a check.”
Ten months post storm, some power companies have argued Texas legislators haven’t done enough to prepare for another freeze and that the state’s grid is still vulnerable for blackouts.
At the Hencken house, there’s a sense of dread.
At the end of October, the family moved back into their home, practically brand-new from renovations.
The repairs depleted their emergency fund and sent the family into debt, Amy said.
“Back to square one,” she said. “’Cause that’s what life is, right? It’s a vicious merry-go-round. Just hang on as tight as you can.”
Workers who removed the mold from their home warned Amy mold could reappear if studs and walls got wet again.
New drywall covers the beams supporting the ceiling where mold once grew, and if it grows back, no one will be able to see it, Amy said.
Shortly after the family moved in, Amy was looking inside a downstairs closet when she found a cluster of greenish brown spots.
It was mold.
