IMO Chief Dan Charley Recounts Living Through Irma

Little more than a week ago, I was riding in the back of a plane from Philadelphia to Palm Beach sitting in the very last row of a single-aisle Embraer 190 aircraft.

I was making my way south to The Breakers hotel and conference center for the annual meeting of the Insured Retirement Institute, the gathering of annuity manufacturers and distributors.

It was the morning of Sunday, Sept. 24, more than two weeks after Hurricane Irma had battered the Florida Keys with Category 5 winds and forced authorities to call for the evacuation of large parts of the Sunshine State.

Many passengers on my American Airlines flight were asleep, which is how you’ll find many travelers on a 10 a.m. Sunday morning out of Philadelphia.

So it was about half-way through the flight when got around to striking up a conversation with the man seated next to me – none other than Dan Charley, president and founder of the insurance marketing organization Alpine Brokerage Services.

The company has offices in New Jersey and Florida, and Dan splits time with his wife and two children in Jupiter, Fla., where he was headed to after business meetings in New Jersey.

He recounted the harrowing experience of living through Hurricane Irma, which still delivered wind speeds of 80 mph to Florida’s east coast as the eye of the storm fed off the warm Gulf waters on its way up the west coast of the state.

Dan’s family made it through the storm, thankfully, but not without a couple of tense moments during which the four of them hunkered down in the home’s closets, the most protected areas inside the home.

The Charleys survived for a couple of days on stockpiled food and water, and mostly in the dark.

Remember, when you board up a home, as the Charleys did, there’s no light inside the house once the power is turned off or severed so it’s important to let some light stream in from a window, preferably one facing away from the wind.

Luckily, the Charleys lived not far from a major public building that authorities opened as a shelter and power was restored first to that part of the grid so the Charleys weren’t in the dark for too long.

When the Charleys emerged, they found the streets a mess as palm trees snapped like match sticks and debris was scattered everywhere.

But those few hours were enough to give Dan and his family a sense of that why hurricanes are nothing to be trifled with and the brutal conditions foisted on residents of some Caribbean islands and Puerto Rico.

Two hurricanes – Irma and Maria – struck in a three-week period in September, leaving the 3.4 million residents of Puerto Rico and hundreds of thousands of other people in the Caribbean facing a humanitarian crisis.

No one would wish that on anyone, but it is also an opportunity for insurance advisors and distributors to help the clients and policyholders become whole again.

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Writer Cyril Tuohy has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. Cyril may be reached at [email protected].

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