When big storms go bad: CAT adjusters are the insurance industry's frontline against natural and man-made catastrophes. In the aftermath of Hurricane Dennis, Risk & Insurance's Matthew Brodsky traveled with adjusters from Crawford & Company. This is his account of how—and why—these can-do men and women took on a storm predicted to be as devastating as last year's Hurricane Ivan

Risk & Insurance, Sept 1, 2005 by Matthew Brodsky

Howell had actually started drawing out his game plan sitting on the plane to Pensacola. Upon getting to the site, Howell assessed the structure for its safety and security. After he was confident in its stability, he began the more traditional tasks of quantifying damages. He decided what specialists to call in to form his team, whether they be construction, roofing, electrical or drying experts. He then determined the "scope of repair," the extent of the damage and what it would take to get the shopping center operational again.

To the untrained eye, this looked like a monumental task. The roof took the brunt of the hit. Whole swaths of roofing had been torn off and strewn about. Chunks of debris had smashed into air-conditioning units. Inside, the center looked more like a warehouse than a retail site, with goods stacked and covered and stowed away. But even that was a stretch. Wires criss-crossed the floor. puddles filled the spaces where the power cords weren't, and workers in boots and goggles frantically carried things about.

It took Howell an hour and a half to make a preliminary assessment. His next task would be to put the job out to bid, and after he considered several bids, he could then calculate the amount of loss. His ultimate goal, Howell says, was: "Pay what we owe, not a penny more. not a penny less."

In the process of finding this magic number, Howell had to make countless decisions with the resolution of a full-bird colonel, about his specialists, about repairs and about other details that he'd rather not talk specifics about.

"It's not difficult malting those decisions, knowing what I know," Howell says. "A lot of it is people skills, qualifying who you're dealing with." It's a matter of having faith and confidence in his own skills and experience, and in those of his specialists. And it's about common sense and a wealth of construction knowledge.

Just by examining the roof, Howell could discern exactly what that tornado had done to it. Spider-webbed patterns of cracks in the lightweight concrete were signs of old wear and tear. The tic-tac-toe grids of cracks, on the other hand, were fresh, a result of the concrete shattering when it was lifted and then slammed back down onto the trusses. Another clue that this is what happened, Howell says, were the base sheet fasteners, metal hooks that normally hold the roof down onto the metal undergirding. They now were loose and poking up.

With wind damage to the roof, Howell trained his expert eye on whether the water damage inside this particular retail store was caused by leaks through the bad roof, or from flooding--and whether the damage would be covered by the wind or flood policy.

"That is an art and not a science," says Trice. "It's lovely to say you go from the water line down and that's flood, but it's rarely that clean."

Adjusters must discern if the wind damage came before the flooding, and somehow opened the door--or roof in this case--for the water damage.

"No. 1 is, you have to have damage to the roof," explains CAT commercial adjuster David Atkinson. "You have a little damage to the roof, and then you can see the stains on the ceiling, then you have the water damage up there." Only then can you put the tab on the wind insurer, but even then it's not clear-cut. "But you have to separate the damages," says Atkinson, "between the water damage from that and then the flood damages."