Aon Exec to Address Sept. 11 and Aftermath at CIWA Event

Ringing in the New Year, the California Insurance Wholesaler Association will hold its 7th Annual Wholesaler Industry Day on Jan. 11-12, 2002, at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines Hotel in San Diego.

Following registration on both Thursday and Friday, there will be activities including continuing education from 3 to 5 p.m.

The featured speaker of the Jan. 11 buffet dinner/reception will be George deMenocal of Aon Re Inc.

A senior vice president in Domestic Treaty for Aon Re Worldwide, deMenocal, who was in Tower Two of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, will talk about what he saw, heard and felt as he escaped from the disaster.

In an interview with Insurance Journal, de Menocal noted how fortunate he and others were to escape the burning wreckage that day.

Although he normally works out of the Connecticut Aon Re office, deMenocal was in the office at the WTC around 7 a.m., prior to a meeting. After taking the elevator to the 99th floor, he would later see his life and the lives of many others change over the next three hours.

At about 8:55 a.m., deMenocal said he heard an explosion, which he compared to the sound of “the loudest lightning strike next to your house you’ve ever heard in your life.” Noting that he was on the southwest side of the Two WTC (the south tower), on the opposite side of the building from that facing the blast which had just struck the north tower, deMenocal watched as the building, even the inside of the windows, shook. “I got off the phone and walked to the window that faces Ms. Liberty and Staten Island and looked out the window,” he said. “There was more paper, steel and glass in the air than anyone could imagine could stay suspended in the air.”

As that debris very rapidly became thicker, with more glass, chairs and desks, followed by fire, deMenocal said that “we realized there had been a building compromising explosion…and we all agreed that we should get out of here.”

After gathering some belongings, deMenocal had to make a first decision as to which direction to go—right or left—to get into the stairwell. He chose left. When deMenocal and others got to about the 60th floor, they were instantly thrown against the wall when the second plane crashed into Two WTC. Those with deMenocal in the stairwell went down from the 60th floor another half an hour later and were then ushered to the plaza level. He estimates that he and the others with him got out five minutes before the building collapsed. Some of the people in deMenocal’s immediate company, whom he was with that morning when the first explosion took place, were not as fortunate.

“You wouldn’t believe how attentive and thorough Aon was with every person who was affected by this,” deMenocal said. “Aon had and took the opportunity to do the right thing. To be a leader.”

While deMenocal said he doesn’t see a need for the government to financially bail out the industry, he added, “The government should contain the severity of prospective exposure from terrorism…hazards that the insurance business can not possibly price for. Terrorism, as a peril, can be best managed by two tools of our trade: retention and price. Terrorism control, mitigation and avoidance are best handled by the government.”

He also noted that another major terrorist blow could be devastating for some companies.”There are some ‘household name’ companies which would likely have a very difficult financial time if they were to incur another significant ‘shock’ event,” he said.

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