Posted On: February 27, 2007, 8:56 am CST

Posted By: Melanie

The adjuster, Alon Arad, faced Farrell's feisty daughter.

Farrell, Arad said, would receive a letter from State Farm denying her coverage for the loss of her home and everything in it.

The insurer had decided, he said, the loss was from flood, covered by federal flood insurance. State Farm would send an engineer later to sort out the wind and flood damage and maybe he would be able to pay something under Farrell's State Farm homeowner's policy.

"How do you know the wind didn't blow (her) house down?" Ortego asked.

"This is the $64 question," Arad said. "I mean, nobody knows."

The good news, he said, was they could take State Farm's denial letter to FEMA. FEMA helped those without insurance coverage, he said, but not much. He knew, he said, because he used to work for FEMA.

"I'm just telling you," the adjuster said. "I'm the messenger."

""Yeah," Ortego reluctantly agreed.

"Don't kill me," the adjuster said. "That's the way it is now and it's going to be for everybody.

"And I know that they are working on some kind of a guideline to see if they can help any and give any help. Understand? But the way it is now, they said this is flood. Understand?"

The adjuster acknowledged it would be tricky for an engineer to separate the wind and water damage.

Ortego bluntly asked Arad, "What do you think happened here?"

"What do I think personally, off-record? It's, it's the wind and water, you know?"

"Yeah," Ortego said.

"Wind and flood," Arad continued. "Now, what, how do they decide? I don't know. They might decide maybe, you know, like, uh, let's pay half of federal, let's pay half insurance. I have no idea. But I think that's the best solution, I mean, in my opinion."

Farrell and Ortego argued the wind, up to 150 miles per hour, could have blown the house up or down before the water arrived.

"The problem is, everybody was evacuated," Arad said. "Nobody was here to even witness it."

This would prove untrue, but so much was still unknown or uncertain in Katrina's chaotic aftermath.

At one point Ortego started to say something about State Farm, but Arad interrupted. "Oh, no, no," he said, speaking slowly, as if he were talking to a small child. "It's every company now."

"It's everybody?" Ortego asked in disbelief.

"Everybody," he said.

He explained the insurance policy was a contract, worded by lawyers, and the contract excluded damage from water.

Farrell did not get it. Her insurance policy included a hurricane deductible for direct physical loss from wind, wind gusts, hail, rain, tornadoes or cyclones.

In speaking with them, Arad learned they did have $15,500 in flood coverage. He coached them through composition of a contents list, on the spot.

He suggested categories of household items they could list - appliances, for example - so the total would equal the meager maximum of their flood policy, which Farrell had received directly from FEMA.

The first floor of her house had flooded in previous tropical storms. The whole area was in a flood zone. In heavy rains, flood water rose and flood water fell, leaving the houses intact.

Farrell tried to tell Arad this was a hurricane, this was different.

After the adjuster's visit, Ortego started digging.

The sun bore down. Her husband was impatient and ready to leave. Flies bit her. A helicopter whirred overhead.

Still she dug, breathing hard while debris clanked as she wrested it from the earth.

She found a vase that had belonged to her grandmother. Her Pawpaw's cooking pot. A fishing pole, bike and binoculars. Her mother's china. She even found some cash.

"I hit the jackpot over here," she called. "Y'all don't know how to dig."

"You know what you don't understand?" her husband asked.

"What?"

"Your Momma's sitting there breaking down watching y'all dig."

"Well," Ortego said, "this is all she has."

The other voices trailed off. Ortego's breath grew faster and harder as she labored in the heat. She had forgotten all about the tape recorder. So many things had happened since Katrina came to life over the ocean.

She called out one last time, to her younger brother, before the tape went silent.

"J.R.," she asked "what did you think of that insurance man?"



M O R E N E W S F R O M
• FEMA
• Outdoor Recreation
• Bay St. Louis, MS
• US News
• Discuss US News