Eyesore hole in brick wall on Steptoe gets an overdue fix

Two years after a run-of-the mill car wreck on Steptoe Street in Kennewick sent an SUV careening through a brick wall, a coalition of civic-minded volunteers is repairing the damage.

Barry Long of EverStar Realty drove past the “Steptoe hole” near the entrance to Columbia Center Estates every day and wondered why it hadn’t been fixed.

Curiosity led him to reach out to Teri Devins, the homeowner trying — unsuccessfully — to wrangle enough money from insurance companies to plug the SUV-sized gap in her back wall.

Long rallied business associates to raise about $3,500 for repairs and secured a commitment from Cliff Thorn Construction to do the work. Repairs began early Monday and will take about a week to complete.

That didn’t stop Long and his team from pausing to celebrate. Monday morning, they hung a banner declaring, “We fixed it.”

The wreck

Teri Devins wasn’t home on May 16, 2014, the day a pickup clipped an SUV, sending it crashing through the brick wall separating her back yard from Steptoe Street.

But her sister was.

“She though a car had gone through the house,” Devins said.

It should have been a straightforward case to solve. Driver causes accident. Driver’s insurance pays for repairs. But it didn’t happen that way. One estimate put the damage to the wall, built in 1982, at nearly $3,000.

The driver who caused the wreck was underinsured. The insurance company sent Devins a check for $1,000. To cash it, she would have had to sign a liability waiver.

She said “no.” She wanted the repairs done right. Her insurance company pursued a settlement with the driver’s insurance but to no avail.

There was no recourse with the homeowners association at Columbia Center Estates, where Devins lives. It has no dues and no money to pay for damage. The wall that runs the length of the property is the responsibility of adjoining homeowners, including Devins.

A friend established a GoFundMe account to help, but as of this week, it has raised just $285. The most recent donation was an anonymous gift of $50, made a month ago.

“It didn’t take off the way we hoped,” she said.

Life with the hole

For nearly two years, Devins lived with the gaping hole that afforded passing drivers a clear view into her backyard, where a trampoline is slowly collapsing under the weight of shattered bricks.

Devins didn’t mind the road noise, she said, but she did mind the vandals who bashed in broken bricks and tossed garbage into her yard.

A single mother to her adopted niece, she lives with her elderly mother. She’s been without a steady job for several years, working temporary jobs to keep the home she’s owned for more than 10 years.

Devins recently completed her associate’s degree at Columbia Basin College. She’s been hunting for steady employment and is attempting to restart her mobile coffee business. The coffee trailer is in her driveway, but the truck she needs to haul it around needs repairs.

Fixing the hole was simply beyond her means.

The solution

When EverStar’s Long heard her story, he decided to rally business associates to help out. The urgency picked up when he learned the city of Kennewick had sent Devins a compliance order requiring her to repair the wall.

Those donors include Gayle Stack of EverStar, Tom Coyne at Umpqua Bank, Ron Shenk at National Property Inspections and Cliff Thorn Construction. Everyone contributed money. Thorn offered to do the work at cost.

On Monday, a crew reported for duty. It will take most of the week to demolish the jagged edges of the wall and then reweave in new bricks.

Long is already looking forward to finding more problems to solve, he said.

“That one was really obvious,” he said.

This story was originally published February 29, 2016 at 10:32 PM with the headline "Eyesore hole in brick wall on Steptoe gets an overdue fix."