Her kitchen burst into flames 8 months ago on Hilton Head. She’s still living in her garage
Danielle Smith was only minutes from home on Hilton Head when she got the call from her neighbor.
“Are you home?” the neighbor asked, looking inside the house through the kitchen window. “I see flames.”
It was Christmas Eve, and the flames in the kitchen were rolling across the ceiling. The neighbor called the Bluffton Township Fire District while Smith rushed home.
As Smith ran through her front door, with thick smoke and the blare of fire alarms filling the air, she couldn’t care less about the house. She was only worried about the seven dogs in the kitchen. Some were being watched as part of Smith’s home-based pet-sitting business, while a few puppies were “presents from Santa,” waiting to be taken to their new homes in time for Christmas morning. The puppies were in crates under the kitchen counter, being pelted with ash from the fire only a few feet above them.
The dogs made it out safely — but Smith’s Windmill Harbor home on Jenkins Island Plantation wasn’t so lucky. Although the flames never reached beyond the kitchen, the fire’s damage would be enough to render most of the house unlivable. By the time Smith put out the flames herself — using a fire extinguisher and the spray nozzle from her kitchen sink — the fire had eaten through the first-floor ceiling, and soot coated the walls.
More than eight months later, Smith is still waiting for repairs to begin. The kitchen has been gutted, and the rest of the house is eerily empty. A drawn-out insurance claims process has left the multi-million dollar townhouse frozen in a state of disrepair.
In the meantime, Smith has set up a makeshift living space in the basement garage. When she’s not staying with a gracious client or friend, she sleeps there, in the garage.
“If I have to stay there, I can, because I do have the HVAC unit down there,” Smith said. “Do I like to stay there? Absolutely not.”
With her kitchen gutted, Smith has nowhere to cook. If she wants to make something as simple as oatmeal, she has to gather her ingredients and head to a friend’s house. In the garage, it’s just the essentials.
“It’s not a bedroom. It’s not a kitchen,” she said. “It is not comfortable compared to what I had.”
A look inside the living space provides a glimpse of Smith’s reality: A fan was pointed directly at the bed to keep her cool in the hot South Carolina summer. The walls are lined with storage boxes and recovered items from the fire. At a nearby desk, she’ll do paperwork for the claims process — and study up on the convoluted world of insurance.
What caused the fire?
Smith’s kitchen stovetop was quickly identified as the source of the fire. Bluffton firefighters deemed the fire an accident, caused by a dog walking along the island counter and turning on a stove burner.
But a later forensic analysis reached a different conclusion: The ignition switch on Smith’s gas cooktop had suddenly and inexplicably exploded, sending flames shooting across the kitchen.
“Anything in its path was torched,” Smith said.
The stovetop model had no recalls, Smith said. She reached out to the device’s manufacturer and her propane company, but received no response.
“[The forensic fire analyst] said it was a ‘combustible explosion,’” Smith said. “Whether I was here or not, it was inevitable to happen. I did not cause it. It should not have happened.”
Even months after the incident, the faulty cooktop still sat on the house’s front porch, alongside other debris and damaged carpet. Smith wasn’t authorized to remove fire-damaged goods from her home until the end of August, after the insurance company waited months to complete its analysis.
‘It’s insanity’
For Smith, the insurance process has been a nightmare.
She filed her initial insurance claim only hours after the fire died down. But she says she hasn’t seen that same sense of urgency from QBE Insurance Group Ltd., an international insurance company based in Sydney, Australia. It’s mostly been a waiting game.
From December until May, the claim was pending as the company inspected the home and attempted to estimate the cost of repairs. When Smith received her first payment of $23,000 in May, she was shocked — the amount was minuscule compared to an earlier total estimate of $200,000.
“That’s not even going to cover the replacement of the cabinets,” she said.
That’s what spurred Smith to hire a public adjuster, an independent insurance professional meant to act as a mediator between the policyholder and the insurance company.
But after QBE got wind of Smith hiring a public adjuster, she said the company went radio silent. Smith says neither she nor the public adjuster have heard from their agents for months.
QBE Insurance Group Ltd. did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
The process was still in its “negotiation stages” until August. The possibility of a claim is inching closer.
Smith is now a “self-taught” insurance expert — but the process wasn’t easy. “There’s not a book” instructing laypeople how to navigate the process. And with homeowners in the dark on details, Smith argues, insurance companies are able to get away with paying less.
Smith said that in her opinion, “The insurance company’s not giving you any information, because the more you know, the more they might have to spend.”
For the time being, you can find Smith in her temporary basement home, poring over documents and policies. She’s more than happy to help out with friends’ insurance questions these days, too.
After all, she’s done her homework.
This story was originally published September 8, 2022 at 1:21 PM.
