I checked the National Hurricane Center website again this morning. It looks like a second possible tropical cyclone is forming right behind Alvin off the west coast of Mexico. The good news about Pacific Hurricanes that travel in a westerly direction is that there is a lot of ocean and not a lot of land in that direction, so the possibility of a devastating landfall is minimal. The bad news is that this creates very little work for folks like us, and when there is a landfall in someplace like Hawaii it is extremely expensive to handle. Unless the Hurricane hits the island of Oahu, there is limited accomodations. If one must stay on Oahu and fly daily over to another island to adjust claims, the expenses are prohibitive. I don't know how many independents handled Hurricane Iniki back in 1992. That was the days before CADO existed, and most independents probably had their hands full with Hurricane Andrew, which hit Florida shortly before Iniki hit Hawaii. But I remember that my one of my State Farm co-workers at the time was sent to work on Iniki. She was accomodated in luxury digs on Oahu, was flown over to Kauai each day for inspections, and needed to have transportation available on both islands. She was on State Farm's dime, but the cost of this would have been prohibitive for an independent. |