Defining Moments

My own defining moment was Aug. 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast. My insurance agency, Daniel and Eustis Insurance, is located in Baton Rouge, La. My partner, Eustis Insurance and Benefits, employs more than 100 people in downtown New Orleans near the Superdome. After the levees broke in New Orleans, dozens of employees from the New Orleans office showed up at my office, one by one, often in tears, with no other place to go. Where would we house our people, and how would we be able to serve our customers in their moment of greatest need?

Thankfully, we had a plan. Prior to the storm, we had contracted with Agility Recovery Solutions, a company that provides access to temporary locations and equipment after a catastrophe. The company delivered a double-wide office trailer to my office in Baton Rouge, complete with a generator, telephones, tables and chairs, assorted business machines and supplies. We had also contracted with Dexcomm Answering Bureau to answer our telephones in the event that our lines were down, so our customers were always able to reach us. Just a few days after the storm, our New Orleans office was re-established in Baton Rouge, and we were personally handling the flood of claims from our customers.

Meeting the needs of our office personnel was a much more difficult task. As our New Orleans employees trickled into my office, one or two at a time, each day after the storm passed, we had to find places for them to live and advise them about doctors for their care, mechanics for their cars, schools for their children and a myriad of other needs. My wife, Janet, and I took as many people (and their pets) into our home as we could physically accommodate. No one knew if their home still existed, and they were prohibited by law enforcement officials from going to New Orleans to find out. Telephone service (land lines and cellular towers) had melted down in the entire area, so they had no contact with family. Some didn’t even know if family members had survived the hurricane.

We realized that we had to acquire substantial housing space for our staff, so we immediately rented six houses. A few days after Katrina, there were no more homes for sale or rent in the Baton Rouge area due to the enormous influx of New Orleans residents. There were hundreds of logistical details to work through to keep our agency running, but we had no choice. We had to care for our employees so that they could serve the needs of our customers who had evacuated to all parts of the country. Employees were stressed, but they all came together as one big claims department and handled claims all day every day for weeks and weeks, all while trying to find ways to put their own lives back together.

After several months of operating from Baton Rouge, our New Orleans office was finally restored. It took tremendous time and effort to find a new degree of normalcy for our agency and employees, but four years and 8,000 claims later, we are able to look back on an event that changed our lives and defined our agency. We never closed our doors to our customers who needed us so badly, and we became stronger and wiser from the experience.

Our experience is not unique in the universe of independent insurance agents. Throughout America there are many Big “I” member agencies that have faced their own disasters and experienced their own defining moments. Some rose to the occasion after catastrophes such as tornados, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and ice storms. Others have faced more personal disasters—automobile accidents, worker injuries, home and business fires and loss of loved ones. One of the beautiful things and at the same time one of the greatest challenges, for independent agents is that we are a part of the communities we serve during times of trouble. Our customers’ losses are often our own losses, and yet we rise to the occasion, serving our customers in their hour of greatest need.

Perhaps our fierce impendence makes us resilient. We are accustomed to fighting for our livelihood and our customers, so many of us have a defining moment every day with every customer we touch. We sell a promise to those customers…the promise that we will be there when they need us. Each promise kept is a defining moment. That is who we are. That is what we do.

—David Daniel, Chairman