‘A really terrible ordeal’: Portland family displaced for over 2 weeks after tree crashes into home
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A Portland family of four is still displaced more than 15 days after a neighbor’s tree crashed into their rented home of more than two years during the winter storm earlier this month.
Allison and John McClain say they were all home on Jan. 13 when they heard what sounded like a bomb. Then, a tree pierced through the property, nearly striking John.
“The walls get softer, the beams drop more. Eventually, it’s all gonna come tumbling down,” John said.
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“It’s just been a really terrible ordeal,” Allison added. “There’s pieces of roof everywhere.”
While the family was okay, evidence of the disaster can still be seen throughout the home. From foliage on the floor to shattered windows and holes in the roof, the family says the nightmare didn’t end there.
“There’s towels everywhere to try to stop the water damage, but it hasn’t. (John) was actually standing right here and he heard the deck and was able to run,” Allison said. “The wall is completely cracked.”
The McClain family told KOIN 6 they’ve had little help from property management as they work to salvage their items, and board up the home from further damage and recent break-ins.
“They topped the tree off and haven’t been back since,” John said.
“It’s really embarrassing to have to plead with your property management company basically saying you’re homeless and have kids, (saying) ‘Can I please get my money back?’ But it took all that just to get our money back this last Friday,” Allison added. “Because they didn’t fix the roof, water when it was raining was dripping down the cabinets. It’s all on the counters, on the floors.”
KOIN 6 reached out to their management company, Smile Property Management, which stated in part: “As the damage was caused by the storm, by a natural disaster which is out of everyone’s control rather than the house itself being in disrepair, landlord or property management is not responsible for providing a short-term house for the residents…We refunded the paid rent between 1/13/2024 and 1/31/2024 to the tenants since the house is not livable right now.”
The management company also said after the family’s contractor was not able to remove the huge branch, Smile workers removed as many branches as they could and placed temporary holes in the roof.
“It may take a while to solve this problem,” the company said.
The family says they don’t blame management for the tree falling or the tree company backing out of the job, but says more could have been done to stop the trickle effect.
“Now we’re dealing with storing stuff with no help, trying to salvage whatever we can. And this is our lives, our lives in boxes,” Allison said.
“They could have called a new contractor to stop all this damage. All this could have been prevented and we could have been back in here, three, four weeks easy. It wasn’t that bad of damage, but now that we have water pouring all the way through two floors, it’s not happening,” John added.
A GoFundMe has been created to help the McClain family find stable housing.
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