Agents Helping Agents in Recovery from Oklahoma Tornadoes

Twelve hundred homes damaged or destroyed, 33,000 people impacted and $2 billion in property losses.

Those are damage estimates from the deadly F5 tornado that hit the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on May 20, just one day after an F4 twister slammed into nearby Lincoln and Pottawattomie Counties.

“All the attention is on the one in Moore and rightfully so, because of the sheer magnitude and just the size and scope,” said Dan Ramsey, president and CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents of Oklahoma. “It was an F5, so everything about it says ‘look at me, look at me.'”

But, he added, the May 19 tornado was “a pretty big one, an F4, a big storm that ripped out a neighborhood out there. It did considerable damage.”

Ramsey said agents and insurance companies are doing their jobs, helping people with claims, and that he had not yet heard of complaints about the claims process.

None of three independent agents in the town of Moore were directly hit by the storm. One agency lost power for a couple of days, but “they got their power and their phone lines back, so they’re back in business again. But one agency had four employees who lost their homes,” Ramsey said.

“A lot of times people think that insurance people don’t get damaged by these things, but insurance people are right in the middle of it just like everybody else,” he said.

Ramsey said the IIAO and the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America (IIABA or Big ‘I’) are helping consumers and insurance professionals impacted by the storms. Big ‘I’ Trusted Choice Disaster Relief funds are available to member agencies and their employees, Ramsey said. In addition, Trusted Choice agents and state associations across the country have offered assistance.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Agencies Windstorm Oklahoma