One American driver has just learned how much a winter storm can really cost.
An American driver learned the hard way that his insurance doesn’t cover damage caused by falling 70kg chunks of ice.
Adam Sousa, of Portland, Maine, parked his car on a normal, residential street in New England following the severe snow storms that have seen the region caked in Frozen levels of snow and ice.
Sousa thought nothing of leaving his car downtown while he nipped off to run some errands.
That’s when the metre long, 70kg chunks of ice started to fall from the building above.
“I thought maybe an icicle would fall off, not a whole car-size piece of ice,” Sousa said, according to The Daily Mail.
One giant chunk of ice smashed through the windscreen and landed between the driver and passenger seat while others fell on the bonnet and wrecked the bumper of Sousa’s 2003 Chevy Cavalier.
Unfortunately for Sousa, his liability insurance will not cover the damage.
“What they told me when I spoke to the police is that they can't really do much, because it's an act of nature. But from what I saw, the size of those ice chunks, they're a 100- 150-pound ice chunks,” Sousa said.
An ordinance in the city of Portland means that a building owner has to remove icicles or ice dams or face a $250 fine, but the building owner, Joseph Soley, doesn’t know whether his own insurance will cover the damage either.
“He [Soley] said he would contact his insurance and he seemed very nice about it,” Sousa told The Daily Mail
“He did ask why I didn’t park somewhere else.”
With no car and no insurance coverage, Sousa has been relying on friends to help him to get work but a crowd-funding campaign has made nearly $5000 for Sousa to purchase a replacement.
