Hydrostatic pressure vs. earth movement

[CAS1]

I'm under FEMA review right now because my Hurricane Sandy claim was denied by the Engineering firms (HiRise and United Technical Consultants) that were caught altering engineering reports. My claim was originally denied because of the earth movement exclusion. I believe we may actually have damage to our foundation because of hydrostatic pressure (which is covered by FEMA) and I'd like to know how an engineer would look for clues that hydrostatic pressure was the real cause of the damage.

I'll go into a little background. Prior to Sandy, we had a hairline crack in our crawlspace foundation on the right side of the house. It wasn't structurally significant (we had it inspected for a refinance 2 months before Sandy). During Sandy, the flow of water was towards the crack and water entered into the crawlspace through the crack.

During the storm, the crack had become larger (from hairline to around a half inch wide) and now it extended from the foundation wall, to the crawlspace slab, and then continued to the foundation wall on the other side of the house. If you can visualize what I'm saying is that what started out as a thin line on the foundation wall, became a larger U shaped crack involving both walls and the slab. The back half of the house started to lean backwards by almost an inch.

Does this sound like something that hydrostatic pressure would do? Thank you for your help.

 

[BAretired]

I doubt that anyone here, based on the information you have provided, would want to offer an opinion. You should retain a local engineer to examine the damage and formulate his own conclusions as to the probable cause.

BA