SUNLAND : Quake Damage Dispute Hits the Space Age

They looked as though they were searching for alien life forms, but Louis Cichelli says the investigators who combed through the rubble of his earthquake-damaged home Monday were seeking something much loftier: the truth.

Nearly a year after the Northridge earthquake, the men--wearing full-body, asbestos-proof suits resembling those worn by astronauts--were there to assess, at long last, the temblor’s effects on Cichelli’s modest Fenwick Street home in Sunland.

They were also there to begin resolving a dispute between Cichelli and his insurance company, which the 75-year-old widower says forced him to spend most of 1994 living in a badly damaged, asbestos-laden home with no heat.

“I’ve been through nothing but hell in that house,” said Cichelli, who suffered head, neck and shoulder injuries when the ceiling collapsed on him last April.

The roof fell in just a month after his insurer concluded that the home was safe and cut off benefit payments, forcing Cichelli to move out of the trailer he had temporarily rented and back into the house.

Meanwhile, Cichelli said, he struggled for most of the year trying to collect benefits from his $425,000 earthquake and homeowner’s policy from Minnesota Life and Casualty, a policy he had held for 17 years.

At one point, he said, the insurance company wanted to issue him a check for about $16,000 to cover the damage to his home, even though city inspectors placed the damage at nearly $300,000.

After inspectors found the house to be contaminated with cancer-causing, friable asbestos, Cichelli said he was told his policy did not cover asbestos abatement.

Cichelli hired an attorney, but it wasn’t until his case was discovered by Northridge-based Community Assisting Recovery (CARe), a nonprofit group that assists homeowners in their post-quake dealings with contractors and insurers, that things began to change.

“We don’t normally spend so much time on a single case, but here was this little old man with a shoulder injury, living in a house with no heat and sleeping with his dog Peaches wrapped around him to keep warm,” said Shelley Williams, a CARe volunteer. “The house was a total loss, literally falling apart around him. It was pathetic.”

Insurance company officials could not be reached for comment Monday.

Since CARe began assisting him in December, Cichelli has hired a new law firm and again has money for living expenses from the insurance company, allowing him to rent another home in the neighborhood.

But his battle to get the full benefits of his insurance coverage isn’t over.

The men wearing the “moon suits” and respirators were representatives of a general contractor and an asbestos-removal firm hired by Cichelli’s attorneys to assess the cost of repairing the home. Their findings will probably be used to put pressure on the insurance company to reach a full settlement with Cichelli, Williams said.

Stephen Huelsman, a building contractor, said he has performed dozens of quake-damage inspections, but has never before had to wear one of the asbestos-proof suits, called a Tyvek suit.

Cichelli, who is scheduled next month to undergo surgery to repair his shoulder, said he hasn’t decided whether he would rebuild the house upon settling with his insurer. He said he would like to open a “problem-solving center” for senior citizens, to aid others with similar problems.