IIAG Conferees Visited Exhibits, Watched Arlene During 108th Annual Convention

More than 700 Independent Insurance Agents of Georgia members attending the group’s 108th Annual Convention and Exhibition in Destin, Fla., watched closely as Tropical Storm Arlene sped toward the Florida Panhandle and concern mounted about where the storm would go and if it would be a Category 1 storm when it hit land.

“Overall, it worked out pretty well, because Saturday, when the storm really blew in was our vendor’s day and so everybody was inside with the vendors all afternoon,” Mike Clark, convention chairman and president-elect told Insurance Journal. “We would come out and watch the wind blow and the rain blow sideways, it was kind of interesting, but nobody ever felt unsafe.”

Clark said that Arlene blew right through and everything was back to normal by Sunday.

“Sunday morning it was clear again and everyone was able to participate in the regularly scheduled activities like golf and tennis,” Clark explained. “Even the members going out deep-sea fishing were able to do so.”

IIAG piggybacked two conferences, Young Agents and its regular conference, with an estimated 300 young agents attending and 500 regular members.

Yesterday featured IIAG’s business meetings and elections, followed by a presentation and discussion about “Hot Issues and Answers,” presented by Bob Rusbuldt, IIABA CEO. An afternoon seminar on ethics, moderated by Tom Freeland of Infinity Insurance was followed by an evening dinner during which IIAG officers were elected.

The Florida Panhandle received only 6 inches of rain from the Atlantic hurricane season’s first named storm. It flooded a few roads and caused power outages which affected about 11,000 consumers. Arlene’s remnants pushed across Tennessee on Sunday, bringing the area rain and thunderstorms.

Showers and thunderstorms streamed northward Sunday from western Tennessee through Kentucky into Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

After last year’s busy hurricane season, many Florida homeowners moved quickly to Tropical Storm Arlene’s march by emptying stores of hurricane supplies and flocking to gas stations.

“Arlene was a typical early tropical storm, a rainmaker and a little coastal flooding,” Gary Beeler, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Mobile, Ala. told the Associated Press. “We’ve had enough experience, but it’s a good way to test some things we didn’t do so well in Hurricane Ivan. The inland counties may have heightened their awareness more. … We know Ivan cleaned their clock.”

Nearly 5-1/2 inches of rain fell at nearby Hurlburt Field, but the storm wasn’t as big a rainmaker as some spring thunderstorms that drenched the area. April was Pensacola’s wettest month on record at 24.56 inches, Beeler said.

The heaviest reported rain fell 440 miles away in Naples, Fla., which got 5.67 inches over the course of the storm. The sprawling storm also dumped 5 inches of rain in Columbus, Miss. Fort Myers received 5 inches of rain, and 4 inches fell in Homestead, south of Miami.

Topics Florida Catastrophe Hurricane