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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Past Beach Memories

Some memories with stand time itself.  Seeing all the devastation along the eastern shore brings back one of those memories.  When I was a young adjuster for a major Insurance Company, St. Augustine, Fla. was part of my territory.  We had a major hurricane that struck the area and I went immediately to our agents office in St. Augustine.  Our agent John Bailey gave me directions as follows: go across the bridge of lions and follow the tracks until you come to a man standing on the beach holding a shovel.  I followed the directions as crazy as it sounded and soon saw a man standing there holding a shovel.  I stopped and introduced myself and ask him where the insured property was.  The site was exactly as in the photo above and he said we insured his motel and handed me the shovel.  I suspect the shock on my face said it all because he said we were standing on top of his motel.  He told me to dig and I would see what he meant.  I dug about two feet deep and hit his roof.  Sure enough there was a motel under all that sand.  

I handed him the shovel back and told him to have the sand cleared away and I would come back and inspect the damage but I had many claims to handle and shoveling out his motel would take me days.  He called in a back hoe and had the motel shoveled out and called me to tell me the sand sealed his motel and there was zero damage.  It is pretty hard to forget being handed a shovel and told the property you insure is directly under you.  It points out the strength of these coastal storms. 

That is almost as memorable as the nice lady who actually drove over her own arm.  Or the woman that moved barricades to a construction site we insured because it was a short cut to her home. It had rained and was flooded and her car stalled out so she opened the door to walk home and stepped into a open man hole and disappeared from sight.  Still makes a funny picture in my mind. Almost as funny as her threat to sue our insured.  

In any case seeing the destruction along the Jersey shore reminds me of digging down to a motel we insured many years ago.  

1 comment:

Sakoieta said...

Excellent story. :)