Shortly after graduating from college, I spent the better part of four years living on a horse farm in rural Southwestern Pennsylvania. In addition to working as a national account manager for the 84 Lumber Company, I spent my spare time mucking stalls, feeding horses, mending fences, and making hay on the farm in exchange for rent.
Catastrophes, while terrible for people in the affected area, produce a lot of restoration and remediation work in a concentrated area, making them an incredible business opportunity for restoration contractors.
As storms, hurricanes and floods become more frequent, the need to restore properties to a pre-loss condition faster and more efficiently will become more and more critical. As average temperatures across the globe have increased, more rain has fallen during the heaviest downpours.
In late January, CoreLogic released its annual Natural Hazard Risk Summary and Analysis. According to their research, 2016 had “average or below-average activity for most U.S. natural hazards with the exception of flood and wind, both of which saw above-average activity, due in large part to Hurricane Matthew.”
When Hurricane Matthew was plotting its course toward the U.S. in the fall of 2016, I reached out to several restorers to see what their response plans were, and debated heading to a heavily affected area to document and witness the cleanup and restoration efforts myself.
As I prepare to write this article about handling contents during a CAT loss flood situation, I am watching the State of California experience some of the worst flooding in its history. Entire neighborhoods have been evacuated and homes have been swallowed by over flowing rivers and spillways.
Disaster sites are a natural breeding ground for health and safety concerns, including severe injuries to fingers and hands. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that 70 percent of workers who injure their hands were not wearing work gloves during the accident.
In mid-December, those of us in the Australian state of Victoria believed it was going to be a dry and hot summer. After a very hot couple of days in a heat wave in Melbourne, we were asking, “where is our summer rain?”