Florida Update #3

FLORIDA UPDATE #3

Sept. 24, 2004

Things have been such a blur since we’ve been in Florida I just haven’t had time to send off another update. There are so many hurricanes this year we’re having a hard time keeping them straight! We arrived in Orlando on 21 August to work Hurricane Charley and were given about 150 houses to look at between us. We’d looked at about 30 when Hurricane Frances threatened. So we packed our computers and files and took off for Georgia, not knowing how far up we’d have to go. When we crossed the FL/GA border we stopped at the GA Tourist Info Center and they said the only place up I-75 that had rooms available was in Macon (Atlanta was completely sold out) and only two hotels had rooms. So we called the Wingate in Macon and drove on up. The total trip (about 325 miles) took 11 hours. Our car computer said we averaged 32 mph, but that was only because there were a few stretches where we could go 70. The rest of the trip was 12-25 mph. We couldn’t get gas in Orlando before we left but were able to get some at an Oasis on the way. We had to wait in line about 45 minutes.

Once in Macon we set up our “office” in our room and were able to complete a few reports on houses we’d seen, but Frances soon visited Macon and knocked out the power in our hotel, so we didn’t get much accomplished.

We returned to Orlando on 8 Sept and the trip took only about 8 hours this time. Once back we had to re-schedule all the appointments we had made before we left. We decided to stay put for Hurricane Ivan. Got a lot of rain and some wind but of course Ivan went on to the panhandle and destroyed Pensacola and parts of Alabama. Many of the Florida and Alabama adjusters here bailed out and went home, so we took over a lot of their files. We have about 15 houses left to see in our initial Charley bunch, but the other day they gave us 78 more files . . . many are still claims from Charley but a lot are Frances claims and they’re north of Apopka. So we’re now covering about a 100 square mile area.

Now we’re keeping an eye on Hurricane Jeane and thinking we may have to vamoose again for a while. A writer in the Orlando newspaper said the Atlantic is hurling hurricanes at us like bowling balls. Guess we picked the right time to go back on the road, but we sure didn’t expect anything like this. The Orlando metro area is beginning to look more cleaned up but there are still many large trees still down and piles of debris all over. Roofers and contractors are so backed up people are being told they can’t get repairs done for 3-6 months. So as you drive through neighborhoods you see all sorts of blue or white tarps on the roofs to cover the missing shingles and exposed decking. The tarps became scarce so people got very creative. We got on one roof and found Sponge Bob and Nemo looking at us. The homeowner had used shower curtains to cover his roof. We drove by another house where the front slope of the roof said in huge letters: BUDWEISER. They had apparently "procured" a Tyvek billboard which had presumably come off a billboard and used it for their roof cover. We can tell that it’s pushing October as the humidity is not so high and the afternoon rains have decreased. We can actually feel a cool breeze in the evenings.

Looks like we’ll be here through October and probably into November and maybe even beyond. There are so many catastrophes around the country that there are just not enough adjusters. We’ve been contacted by many other companies begging us to go here or there and they’re offering $5,000 signing bonuses. We heard on the news that FEMA (which only goes into areas that have been declared catastrophes) are now in 35 states. But we feel we’ve committed ourselves to the company we’re with and they’ve been good to us. We finally know our way around and can remain in our condo at least through November. So we’re going to continue to dodge incoming hurricanes and ride it out here.

We celebrated our 31st anniversary on 17 Sept by looking at only 8 houses that day and we actually stopped for dinner before coming back to the condo.

Better get back to work before another hurricane comes rolling through. Hope all
is well with you. Let us hear from you when you get the time.