The Claim Adjuster and the Storms of Life

By Robert N. Hatch

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483633909

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Chapter 1

Hurricanes, Tornados, All Devastating Storms

I would like to thank the Lord our Savior, my wife Judy and devoted friends and claims adjusters and managers everywhere. Thank you to my mother, Barbara, and my neighbors Tony and Hazel.

I am not a writer or author. So please bear with me as I tell you about my life experiences as a Claims Adjuster and other experiences. If you have any questions or concerns at all please send me an email or call me. You may decide quickly that this is not for you.

I survived 34 years in the claims and Risk Management life. I am now recently retired. It has been a wonderful time, under the direction of great managers like Jack, Lee, Mike, and Ricky.

I had to keep a positive attitude to make it this far. I once had a negative attitude especially when the work volume was very high, like on storm duty.

It was the best of years and the worst as someone once said. I have visited with spouses in emergency rooms after their spouse had just died from auto accidents or injuries on the job. Now that was a negative experience to say the least. After amputations, fatalities, people severely burnt,

I thought I had seen it all. Then on the numerous deployments (sounds military doesn’t it?) for catastrophic duty after hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, strong winds, hail storms and other. The worst was 6 weeks in New Orleans, LA, 1.5 weeks after the super Katrina, storm left. I would have been there earlier but was already on storm duty in eastern NC after a smaller Hurricane Ophelia. At first I thought and prayed that I would not be called in for such SEVERE STORM CONDITIONS AND TERRIBLE LIVING CONDITIONS. Well I got the dreaded call. Not a positive thing at all. Many say that New Orleans was satan’s den as they have been practicing voodoo for hundreds of years there. Everyone knows, not just the ordinary claim adjusters, how bad things were. But they were even worse on the ground seeing for myself what mother nature can do. This was not God’s fault or the people of New Orleans.

Put this book down now if you are oversensitive to the horrors of it all.

I saw most houses completely destroyed by either flood or wind damage when a tree cut their houses in half. I could not believe my eyes!

Dead dogs everywhere when I was there. Even one still in the house with flies and maggots and stench so bad I had to wear a mask with vicks vapor rub spread heavy on the inside. I will never forget that smell and the sights I saw. Did I mention we also had to wear virtual space suites with respirators to keep the smell and heavy mold with mushrooms from killing us. Not me, never again will I do such work. Going into numerous houses that had 2 DG (dead dogs) and 3 DB (dead bodies) found by the National Guard that were still there with their heavy armored Hum Vees and machine guns. That was a scary sight to see. Never again for me!! No were to use the bathroom as all restaurants within miles were completing flooded out in this war zone like place. The toilets in the homes had no running water and the residents who were gone had been using the toilet for days without being able to flush. This was a terrible experiance.

People there lost everything, their contents, TV’s, family photos, and even their bible. It was especially bad when they had only wind insurance coverage. I hated to tell them of this. I gave them new roofs, gutters and sheds and anything I could think of when they only had flood insurance.

When their 70 plus year old Bibles were destroyed they cried and so did I. We held hands and prayed for peace and a return to normal. I kept being asked Why God, Why now? I told them they are on God’s time and there will be peace in the lives. The first thing I told them is that NO BODY SHOULD BE GOING THROUGH WHAT YOU ARE GOING THROUGH!!

A little bit more about New Orleans. I was handling claims 9 miles from downtown in some of the worst areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.

There was no power, phones or cable TV. No running roads, street signs or stop signs in some areas I was assigned to. Hard to find streets without a GPS. It made it very difficult to find the street signs or house numbers that were