Owner of Life-Size Replica of Noah’s Ark Sue Over Rain Damage

Answers In Genesis, the owner of a life-size replica of Noah’s Ark in Kentucky, is suing its insurers because they refused to cover water damage.

The company said the heavy rains the past two years caused a landslide on its access road to the Ark Encounter theme park, and its five insurance carriers have all refused to cover almost $1 million in damages, reports the Courier-Journal.

According to the 77-page lawsuit filed in U.S. District court, the ark itself was not damaged and the access road was already rebuilt.

Melany Ethridge, a spokeswoman for Ark Encounter’s public relations firm, laughed when a Courier-Journal reporter asked for comment on the situation.

“You got to get to the boat to be on the boat,” Ethridge said.

However, Answers In Genesis’ attorney Amanda Brooke Stubbenfield was not in a laughing mood, telling the paper, “We are not going to comment to the press on this case.”

“The lawsuit speaks for itself. We don’t have anything to add at this time, other than to say that we are highly confident of the merits of our case as we seek a fair resolution to the matter,” Ethridge said in a more serious statement. She added that guests were not affected by the access road work and hours of operations was never changed.

Ark Encounter’s life-size Noah’s Ark replica in Grand County, Kentucky is built to the dimensions mentioned in the Bible and is the biggest timber-frame structure in the world, according to its owners. Tickets to the ark and the nearby Creation Museum are $75 for adults and $24 for children.

According to the Book of Genesis, God created a worldwide flood but chose to spare Noah and his family. Noah was told to build an ark big enough to carry two of each animal to save them.

Ark Encounter was founded by creationist Ken Ham and has been at the center of several controversies in the past. Earlier this year, the Freedom From Religion Foundation criticized Ham for encouraging public schools to visit the park, arguing that it would violate the separation of church and state.

“It is unacceptable to expose a captive audience of impressionable students to the overtly religious atmosphere of Ham’s Christian theme parks,” Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker, presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, wrote in a letter in January, reports the Courier-Journal.

The group and others protested in 2014 when Ark Encounter won $18 million in state tax incentives. State officials tried to reverse that decision after discovering Ark Encounter would only hire Christians to work at the theme park, but the company went to federal court and won in 2016 after a judge said the company was denied its First Amendment rights.

Photo credit: Luke Sharrett /For The Washington Post via Getty Images