Castanet

A home near Victoria had to be demolished after an oil company got its addresses mixed up and delivered a load of furnace oil to the wrong house.

Terry Phillips had recently bought the house on Adelaide Ave. in Saanich, just north of Victoria.

He was in the midst of renovating it when the oil company arrived and started pumping oil into the underground tank. But unfortunately the tank at his house was no longer in service.

"I had disconnected the oil tank and was getting 200 amp service in for electric heat," said Phillips.

"They got the wrong address. They filled up the tank. It went into the ground."

More than 300 litres of fuel spilled into the ground, contaminating the yard and under the house.

David Rogers, with B.C. Hazmat Management, the company doing the cleanup, said it was impossible to save the house because of the extent of the spill.

"Quite often we can dig under the house and support it with concrete. Because of the way it is, and the underground oil tank here, we could not support the house and save it."

The cost of the cleanup and rebuilding of the home is being covered by the oil company's insurance.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... anich.html

what a complete load of BS.I smell Insurnace scam here all the way to the bank

That would be easy enough to check out, wouldn't it? One question asked of just one person - whoever it was who took the order for the delivery and what address were they supposed to deliver to. If the delivery guy delivered to that address, then it was perhaps a scam but if he just read it wrong and delivered instead to this address, then it can't be considered a scam. I bet the insurance company checked it out very thoroughly - this is gonna cost them a bundle.

It'll cost in the neighbourhood of $750,000 give or take.

A Saanich home was reduced to rubble Tuesday after efforts to clean up a heating-oil spill failed, making demolition the only option.

The spill this year resulted from a misdelivery by an oil company, which means that - unlike most of the increasing number of home oil-tank and pipe failures in Greater Victoria - the homeowner won't be on the hook for the $750,000 cost of demolition and rebuilding.

That cost will be picked up by the oil delivery company's insurer, said David Rogers, founder of B.C. Hazmat Management.

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/Saanich+ho ... z2CLV7XlJN

grammafreddy wrote:That would be easy enough to check out, wouldn't it? One question asked of just one person - whoever it was who took the order for the delivery and what address were they supposed to deliver to. If the delivery guy delivered to that address, then it was perhaps a scam but if he just read it wrong and delivered instead to this address, then it can't be considered a scam. I bet the insurance company checked it out very thoroughly - this is gonna cost them a bundle.

your misreading and or misunderstanding my post.Its a scam in the sense that a lousy 200-300 litre heating oil spill could in no way cause a house to be demolished.I dont care what report or what expert thinks it does.Its simply not neccessary

ticat900 wrote:

grammafreddy wrote:That would be easy enough to check out, wouldn't it? One question asked of just one person - whoever it was who took the order for the delivery and what address were they supposed to deliver to. If the delivery guy delivered to that address, then it was perhaps a scam but if he just read it wrong and delivered instead to this address, then it can't be considered a scam. I bet the insurance company checked it out very thoroughly - this is gonna cost them a bundle.

your misreading and or misunderstanding my post.Its a scam in the sense that a lousy 200-300 litre heating oil spill could in no way cause a house to be demolished.I dont care what report or what expert thinks it does.Its simply not neccessary

So how would you propose they clean up the oil that is sitting under the house so that it doesn't end up in the ground water? Or should they just let it seep into the ground water for the next few decades.

KL3-Something wrote: So how would you propose they clean up the oil that is sitting under the house so that it doesn't end up in the ground water? Or should they just let it seep into the ground water for the next few decades.

No spill is a good spill but let's try to keep things in perspective here. We're talking about approx 75 gallons of home heating oil which is really just deisel fuel being spilled onto the ground. Efforts around the tank itself would have probably recovered at least half of that but even assuming that were not possible 75 gallons is hardly an envirnmental catastrophe requiring a 750k bill. More than that amount leaks into the ground every few minutes I'm sure from a multitude of sources from corroded tanks to minor vehicle spills. Fortunately the ground is able to absorb much of this and microbes eventually take care of it without groundwater being compromised. If nextto a stream or drain that could lead to a stream or if it had been a truckload in one location, ya ok, now you have an issue.
Like I said, no spill is a good spill but for lords sake the pendulum has swung way too far and it is little wonder why insurance rates have gone up 300% over the last decade. A cost we all pay for over reactions such as this. Oil heat used to be quite prevalent in days gone by and the amount that went into the ground from corroded and abandoned tanks would probably astound you. Yet I don't recall it showing up in the news as polluting aquifers? I guess what we don't know about can't hurt us?

KL3-Something wrote:So how would you propose they clean up the oil that is sitting under the house so that it doesn't end up in the ground water? Or should they just let it seep into the ground water for the next few decades.

The ground would have to be cleaned up just for insurance purposes.

http://home.costhelper.com/heating-oil-tank.html

That may be in the US but I would guess costs would still be substantial (and obviously is in this case).

your misreading and or misunderstanding my post.Its a scam in the sense that a lousy 200-300 litre heating oil spill could in no way cause a house to be demolished.I dont care what report or what expert thinks it does.Its simply not neccessary[/quote]

So how would you propose they clean up the oil that is sitting under the house so that it doesn't end up in the ground water? Or should they just let it seep into the ground water for the next few decades.[/quote]


my gawd man your making this sound like 300000 gallons of oil was spilled along side the river quai that feeds a city of millions? there is no ground water contamination possible and it was less than 75 gallons total of which iam 100% confident that less than 1/2 seeped from the tank before it was pumped out.talk about making a mountain out of less than a molehill

Fancy wrote:

KL3-Something wrote:So how would you propose they clean up the oil that is sitting under the house so that it doesn't end up in the ground water? Or should they just let it seep into the ground water for the next few decades.

The ground would have to be cleaned up just for insurance purposes.

http://home.costhelper.com/heating-oil-tank.html

That may be in the US but I would guess costs would still be substantial (and obviously is in this case).

i watched a garbage truck in vernon hit a curb on tronson road and his entire fuel tank drained out onto the road and down into the lake slowly.
nobody worried at all.
that would easily be the same amount and type of fuel as in the story.
yes it all changes when insurance is involved.

Over the years I worked For quite a few different Geo Tech companies Related to environmental issues.

And nowadays Even the smallest diesel spill Will have the Environmentalists spinning around in circles If they find out about it.

Pretty much all of Clement Road here in Kelowna Where the big fuel distributors used to be Was one big Diesel spill. There had to be thousands of gallons Leaked From their tanks on the ground And into the groundwater .

All they pretty much did Was put pipes in the ground and monitor it.