Today, Aug. 24, 2006, marks the 14th anniversary since Hurricane Andrew first made its devastating landfall in Florida. Even though Andrew's financial figures now pale in comparison to last year's Hurricane Katrina (adjusted for inflation, Katrina's insured property loss figures of $40 billion still are double Andrew's losses), at the time it raised a number of familiar questions and reminds us that issues faced by adjusters back then still continue today.
Below are several excerpts taken from Claims articles that covered what was at the time the worst natural disaster to strike the U.S.
Claims' National Report section in September 1992:
Early government loss estimates ranged from $10 to $12 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Insured damages may well exceed the previous record of $4.2 billion, set by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. If so, the P/C industry will experience its worst catastrophic losses in any year. The total to date is $3.7 billion, and the highest total for any year was $7 billion, reached in 1989. New reports noted that there are approximately 10,000 claim adjusters permanently working in Florida. Thousands more were brought in as insurers hastened to set up temporary offices.
Contributing writer Richard Bruns wrote in Claims' 1992 October issue:
After the terror of that awful night came shock, a disbelieving stare in the eyes of survivors, emergency personnel, politicians, and insurance professionals. They looked at the path of perfect ruin cleared across southern Dade County, Fla., by Hurricane Andrew on August 24 and groped for a comparison.
Claims personnel wandered in a wilderness of wrecked, abandoned homes, where their street maps were of little use and the occasional resident struggled to give directions through a landscape without landmarks. [Adjusters] work was slowed to a crawling pace of handling only two or three cases a day.
"In my 15 years as an adjuster, it isn't comparable to anything I've seen," said Darryl Davis, a marine surveyor with Mulit-Line Claim Services in Ft. Lauderdale. "It's as if you walked into a war zone where they'd dropped a bomb, and all the dead had been taken away."
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