Olathe homeowners struggle to get repairs paid for after city truck strikes wire
OLATHE, Kan. — For weeks several Olathe homeowners have had trouble getting anyone to help them after a city truck ended up doing a whole lot of damage.
The truck doing bulk pickup snagged an overhead wire March 25.
“I saw the truck coming down the street and realized he was not going to clear the wire,” Susan Higgins said.
It left behind the sort of damage you’d expect from a severe storm.
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“When it snapped it broke the telephone pole there and broke the chimney over here,” Mel Clary said pointing to homes on both sides of East Cothrell Street.
“For the whole block clear up the street and all the way down the cable has been laying on the ground like this for six weeks,” Dale Baker said.
A neighbor across the street is looking at more than $30,000 to replace his chimney and part of his roof. Higgins owes $3,000 for a new electric box.
“All the wires that were in the top had been pulled out and were in the yard,” she demonstrated.
And Baker received a $1,500 estimate for damage from the wire to his roof and chimney, the pole thankfully fell short of landing on his home.
“Somebody needs to pay for it, not us people who suffered the damages. It wasn’t our fault and it wasn’t our making,” Baker said.
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Neighbors say a photo of the truck with a chair seemingly blocking the boom arm from laying flat played a part. But the city denied their claims saying the truck is only 14 feet high and the wire was hanging lower than a 14 foot 6 inch minimum.
“We were just frustrated we were in the middle of a tug of war between two people that could keep this going as long as they wanted to. But we are the ones stuck facing a really large bill,” Higgins said.
So they turned to FOX4 Problem Solvers. Suddenly the answers the three homeowners were seeking came Tuesday less than an hour after we started asking questions.
“He left a message and said the City is going to pay all of our expenses and they will go after whoever owns the wires to recoup that money,” Higgins said.
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That’s a process called subrogation where insurance can pay a claim and then go after someone else they believe to be at fault.
