FORMER LOUISIANA INSURANCE COMMISSIONER J. Robert Wooley offered an up close and personal account of the hurricane-ravaged south as he closed the Benefits Selling Expo in March.
According to Wooley, devastation in New Orleans was so widespread that not one piece of property in St. Bernard Parish escaped damage. Twelve feet of water topped homes and businesses. Despite the devastation, Wooley's office opened the next day.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were the most costly natural disasters in U.S. history, with estimates of insured losses between $60 billion and $75 billion. Unlike the 2004 hurricanes that hit the Florida Panhandle, Katrina and Rita caused an unprecedented amount of damage to industrial and commercial property, which brings longer and more expensive interruptions to businesses.
Wooley says everything changed.
"My job completely changed. We went from 5,000 consumer calls a month to 20,000," he says.
Many insurance practices were completely wiped out by the hurricanes. Not only were brokers displaced, their clients were, too -- some permanently. As recently as a month ago, some brokers were still without power in the New Orleans area.
The biggest challenge for those in the insurance industry was the lack of housing for adjusters. Wooley says State Farm chartered a plane and flew in adjusters every day for two weeks.
"This was the first time a major metropolitan area had been hit by a hurricane since Betsy had hit New Orleans."
Wooley says, post-Katrina, it was not uncommon for people to have four or five claims adjusters out to their houses because the stress of the situation -- finding dead bodies was not uncommon -- became too much. This delayed the claims process even more.
Wooley recounted the massive hurdles in front of him. One of the most daunting was the lack of housing. There was nowhere for insurance adjusters to live. State Farm flew its adjusters in and out; however, no one could
prepare them for the stress and many simply couldn't handle it and left.
He says he was successful because he was honest, "I told people the truth."
In closing, Wooley commented, "It will be 10 to 15 years before things return to normal in the hurricane-hit regions."
After his resignation in February, Wooley went to work for Adams and Reese, a regional law firm in the southeast and Washington.
