Today, Aug. 24, 2006, marks the 14th anniversary since HurricaneAndrew first made its devastating landfall in Florida. Even thoughAndrew's financial figures now pale in comparison to last year'sHurricane Katrina (adjusted for inflation, Katrina's insuredproperty loss figures of $40 billion still are double Andrew'slosses), at the time it raised a number of familiar questions andreminds us that issues faced by adjusters back then still continuetoday.

Below are several excerpts taken from Claims articles thatcovered what was at the time the worst natural disaster to strikethe U.S.

Claims' National Report section in September 1992:

Early government loss estimates ranged from $10 to $12 billionfrom the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Insured damages maywell exceed the previous record of $4.2 billion, set by HurricaneHugo in 1989. If so, the P/C industry will experience its worstcatastrophic losses in any year. The total to date is $3.7 billion,and the highest total for any year was $7 billion, reached in 1989.New reports noted that there are approximately 10,000 claimadjusters permanently working in Florida. Thousands more werebrought in as insurers hastened to set up temporary offices.

Contributing writer Richard Bruns wrote in Claims' 1992 Octoberissue:

After the terror of that awful night came shock, a disbelievingstare in the eyes of survivors, emergency personnel, politicians,and insurance professionals. They looked at the path of perfectruin cleared across southern Dade County, Fla., by Hurricane Andrewon August 24 and groped for a comparison.

Claims personnel wandered in a wilderness of wrecked, abandonedhomes, where their street maps were of little use and theoccasional resident struggled to give directions through alandscape without landmarks. [Adjusters] work was slowed to acrawling pace of handling only two or three cases a day.

"In my 15 years as an adjuster, it isn't comparable to anythingI've seen," said Darryl Davis, a marine surveyor with Mulit-LineClaim Services in Ft. Lauderdale. "It's as if you walked into a warzone where they'd dropped a bomb, and all the dead had been takenaway."