Specialists put a price on storm’s fury

WINTER HAVEN —  In a silver van marked “Catastrophe Response,” Tom Martinez pulled up to a house on the shore of Lake Otis Monday afternoon to assess the damage.

“This is the worst I’ve seen so far,” said Martinez, an adjuster for Nationwide Insurance who specializes in large claims.

An old shade tree sat on the front lawn, its roots reaching toward the sky, branches lopped off in a tangled heap on the ground.

Gigantic pieces of black plastic covered the roof of the house like bandages, hiding the holes where the tree had pierced shingles, wood and insulation.

“I’m so frustrated,” said Anne-Marie Leedy, who recently renovated the house with her husband, Ingram. “We did so much work to this house.”

Since Hurricane Charley swept across Florida Friday, Martinez and other insurance adjusters have driven from one storm-ravaged site to the next, estimating the cost of turning damaged houses into homes again.

“I feel bad because there’s no way I can help everybody,” he said. “You have to go by the policy they have.”

Martinez also felt Charley’s bite, but nothing like the kind of damage he was seeing on Monday.

“We were really lucky,” he said. “We had minor damage, a broken screen, some small trees down.”

After securing his Orlando home Saturday, Martinez went to work. He has barely stopped since.

During crises like hurricanes, it’s normal for insurance adjusters to works 12 hours a day for three weeks straight. Having a disaster close to home was something of a treat for Martinez, who usually spends weeks at a time in far-off places, sleeping in hotels.

“Usually if I can come home, I do,” he said. “I like my bed.”

Each claim takes Martinez between three and four hours to assess. First, he snaps digital photos of the damage. Then he diagrams the house, measuring the rooms and marking the damaged areas.

After that he itemizes the repairs on a computer program that estimates the costs of the fixes and adds them all up. But despite the insurance coverage, many homeowners are floored by what they have to pay out of their own pocket for hurricane damage -- 2 percent of the home’s assessed value.

“The deductible really hurts,” Ingram Leedy said. “It really makes you think twice about if you’re going to file a claim.”

By the end of the day Monday, Martinez had surveyed four homes. The damage he saw totaled about $50,000. He’s given advances to families who don’t have enough cash on hand to make repairs and suggested contractors that have come through for other Nationwide customers.

“That’s what I really like about this,” he said, “to help people come back to their normal lives.”

Tania deLuzuriaga can be reached at [email protected] or 407-931-5934.