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 in the afternoon of May 20. The storm hit just one day after an F4 twister devastated 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 out there doing their job, helping people with claims, and that he had not yet heard of complaints about the claims process.

There are three independent agents in the town of Moore and none of them were directly hit by the storm.

While at least one agency was out of power for a couple of days,”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 is,” he said.

Ramsey said the IIAO and the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America (IIABA or Big ‘I’) are responding to help not only consumers but insurance professionals as well affected by the storms.

Trusted Choice Disaster Relief funds from the Big I are available to member agencies and any employees in the affected counties and communities, Ramsey said. In addition, he said the IIAO has had numerous offers of help from Trusted Choice agents and state associations across the country.

In addition, IIAO members are raising funds for the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, delivering needed items to a Red Cross distribution site in Oklahoma City and have arranged delivery of non-perishable items donated by the Trusted Choice Independent Insurance Agents of Houston directly to an IIAO member, the Universal Insurance Agency in Moore.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Agencies Windstorm Oklahoma