Hurricane-stricken Florida puts strain on 15,000 adjusters.

In the wake of back-to-back hurricanes Charley and Frances, some 15,000 insurance adjusters from throughout the country are on the ground in Florida to speed the settlement process for thousands of commercial and residential claims, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

About 7,000 of these adjusters were dispatched to the hardest-hit areas of Florida after Charley, a category 4 hurricane, swept eastward across Florida and into other areas of the U.S. Eastern seaboard starting Aug. 13.Their numbers were bolstered by another 8,000 after Hurricane Frances made landfall Sept. 4 on the east coast of Florida, bringing hurricane-force winds to an unusually broad swath of the Florida peninsula. The 15,000 adjusters represent staffers as well as independents who are working for carriers.

"We've got adjusters scattered all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast, as far as Fort Lauderdale down south, and all the way up to Tallahassee," said Hart Hubbard, director of catastrophe services for GAB Robins, whose firm had as many as 90 adjusters in various parts of the state to handle claims for a number of insurance companies.

"I'm surviving" said Franklin Horowitz, a veteran public adjuster and chief executive officer of Claims International, who worked in Florida as a consultant to three public adjusting firms, several insurance brokerages, a major insurer and some accounting and law firms. By midmorning on Sept. 9, he had visited damaged buildings in Fort Pierce and Boca Raton, then planned to head for Fort Lauderdale. "In Fort Pierce, all of the traffic lights were out. There was no power, so everybody's food is getting spoiled," he said. "Almost every roof I saw was either blown off or shingles were blown off, and gutters and downspouts were down."

The unprecedented one-two punch of these storms also is making it difficult, in many cases, for adjusters to determine what damage is attributable to Charley and what is attributable to Frances. For example, many homeowners who had roof damage with Charley weren't able to secure contractors and have their roofs repaired in advance of Frances. As a result, a number of policyholders now are claiming severe drywall ceiling damage from Frances' torrential rains.

"That's a big problem, and it'll be very confusing to figure it out," Horowitz said. After a property loss, he explained, a homeowner's total amount of insurance reinstates itself. For example, even though a policyholder with $300,000 in coverage might have incurred a loss of $200,000 during an initial hurricane, the $300,000 limit would again apply if another hurricane came along. "But you can't claim the same damage twice," he said. "So figuring out where Charley stopped and where Frances started in terms of damage will be difficult. There will be issues of multiple deductibles."

Florida's Department of Financial Services said 510 resident and nonresident public adjusters were licensed in the state as of Sept. 1.

Those numbers may help, but the throngs of public adjusters, like the 15,000 staff and independent adjusters at work in Florida, "are tapped out right now, with companies looking ferociously to bring people in from out of town," Horowitz said.

The influx of so many adjusters to one state is likely to place a strain on claims systems throughout the country. "If an insurance company is bringing their own staff in, then that opens the door to who's going to handle their claims back in another state, further inland," Hubbard said. "Of course, that puts the burden on the adjusters that are staying behind."

This pressure is likely to cause insurers to change their practices, Horowitz said. "The typical adjuster probably doesn't have more than $50,000 authority to settle a claim without going to home office for approval," he said. But in times of severe need, companies will raise that level of authority, especially for their senior claims adjusters, he said.