Hurricane Irma: Insurer Citizens braces for more than 100,000 claims

Palm Beach Post (FL)

Sept. 07--Companies scrambled to get ready for hard-charging Hurricane Irma Wednesday as Florida's second-largest insurer approved emergency spending to prepare for more than 100,000 claims and mobile phone providers reinforced networks and waived charges to contact people on islands in the storm's path.

In a phone meeting Wednesday afternoon, the board of state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp. unanimously approved spending more than $343,000 to arrange 800 additional claims adjusters from multiple vendors after the storm. Company officials acknowledged serious problems getting as many adjusters as they hoped after last year's Hurricane Matthew.

"We are looking at all alternatives that are available to us to be as responsive as possible when this event occurs," president Barry Gilway told members of the board.

More than 100,000 claims represents more than one in five of Citizens' total customers, and as many as 250,000 of them are in the storm's potential path, officials said.

Meanwhile, the Florida Property & Casualty Association said policyholders should take care of their own safety first, but be ready to react fterward.

The group, representing a number of Florida-based property insurers, offered this advice to customers: Call their agent, or the insurance company's claims hotline, prior to signing any repair contract, and "be wary of giving away their policy benefits and proceeds to a third party vendor."

Mobile phone provider AT&T said its workers topped off fuel generators, tested back-up batteries at cell sites and worked to shore up facilities against flooding. The company said it staged emergency response equipment in strategic locations.

"We've worked for the past few days to position equipment and crews to respond to the storm," said AT&T Florida president Joe York. "With a storm of this size, we may have some outages. But if service goes down, we'll do all we can to get it back up as fast as possible."

Other phone firms also prepared their networks. Verizon said it is offering free wireless and wireline calling as well as texting from the U.S. to the British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Turks and Caicos.

Sprint, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile said customers in the U.S. will face no international call and text overage fees to Anguilla, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Turks and Caicos, and British Virgin Islands. Certain fees also are waived for customers in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

"During times like these, the cost of staying connected to friends and loved ones should be the last thing on anyone's mind, and we want to do what we can to support our customers across impacted areas," said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure.

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