The northwest Santa Rosa home that Kevin and Michelle McCarthy's kids dubbed "the broken house" after a more-than-50-ton crane fell through it 20 months ago is being demolished completely at last.
Crews started Wednesday to break away what remained of the house the McCarthys bought just months before the crane accident forced them to move out in November 2009.
"It's a new chapter in our lives, and we're very happy to move forward," Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday morning as his two sons, now 3 and 6, pedaled their bikes in and around those watching the work on Molly Court. "It's been too long."
Michelle Jacobsen McCarthy said she's been bringing the boys to the house to swim in the pool and ride their bikes around the neighborhood as much as possible.
They know it's "home," even if they are living in a rental and will be until the Molly Court house is rebuilt and they can move back in - next spring, they hope.
"We can plant a garden, kind of start fresh," Jacobsen McCarthy said.
The split-level house at the back of the court has been boarded and fenced up since Nov. 16, 2009, when a crane removing cut pieces of a huge oak tree suddenly swung over and into the house, rendering it uninhabitable.
The accident occurred when the crane operator hoisted a length of tree trunk estimated at 5,800 pounds but which actually weighed more than twice that, according to court records and a Cal-OSHA report.
The crane not only crushed parts of the house, it sent the remaining structure askew and even left the foundation out of whack, the McCarthys said.
But while the McCarthys had insured the house for one and one-half times its purchase price, it wasn't enough to cover the estimated $750,000 to completely rebuild, they said.
In the meantime, a dispute between the tree-cutting firm and the crane company delayed resolution of liability questions in the case.
The McCarthys finally filed formal suit last fall and in May appeared headed to trial when Kingsborough Atlas Tree Surgery Inc. and Reliable Crane and Rigging settled with the McCarthys, allowing them to move forward on demolition and reconstruction.
The tree and crane companies continued to battle between themselves, each pointing fingers at the other as the responsible party.
Demolition of what's left of the house should take about a week, Jacobsen McCarthy said. The McCarthys hope to have approval of their building plans in six-to-eight-weeks, and about eight months of construction after that.
What was left of the diseased oak after the crane fell is still standing, meanwhile, the top of the trunk about equal in height to a second-story roof until it's removed some time soon.
Jacobsen McCarthy said she recently had a bee keeper come rescue a colony of bees that would otherwise be disturbed and displaced.
But no crane will be used this time, she said.
"I think they're just going to push it down and cut it into pieces and haul it away," she said.
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