This is a letter of extreme gratitude to several people.

At 4:30 a.m. on Sept. 25 the telephone rang. “We just received a 911 call that a city water main broke and water is rapidly advancing toward your building at 20270 Front St.”

My husband Steve was out the door and at the building within 20 minutes. The parking lot looked like a lake and there were 3 inches of water throughout the entire bottom floor, flooding out three of our tenants.

My first “thank you” is to the city Public Works employees who worked diligently all day to first of all stop the leak, replace the broken water main, and then cleaned up the parking lot.

Thank you to our incredible tenants, Joe and Kathy Prevost of Pioneer Mortgage, who have been working around the dust and the mess and the noise these past couple of weeks and are committed to staying the course under horrific conditions.

Ed McAvoy from Edward Jones has also been very accommodating and flexible, for which we are very grateful. Fortunately, Pat McFadden of Edward Jones is accommodating Ed in her office until the repairs can be completed. Thank you so much, Ed and Pat.

Unfortunately, Connie Wyland did not fare as well. Her insurance, Liberty Northwest (EHL), is not covering her losses and this misfortune has devastated her interior design business. She has been a great tenant for all of these years and we are very grateful to her for that.

The first question people usually ask me is, “Is the City of Poulsbo covering any of the losses?” Unfortunately, Mayor Erickson’s response is that the city is not liable for any of the losses suffered by us or by any of our tenants. Unbelievable, but true.

Thank goodness we have an extremely professional insurance company. Farmers Insurance has been there for us from the beginning. The moment we contacted them, they sprang into action and have been extremely helpful and have given us personal attention since then. They have made this disaster as painless as possible for us and for that we are extremely grateful.

A huge “thank you” to Oscar Ortiz of Farmers Insurance.

Ruth Urand
Poulsbo