Dalleen McClaskey and her husband are one of those stories. For nearly the duration of the storm, they sheltered in the basement of their home, pumping out water for 13 hours, nonstop. Once the storm had calmed, they finally went outside.
“It looked like a bomb went off,” Dalleen said. “I just remember how eerie it was. The sky was so gray.”
The yard was in ruins, with five oak trees ripped from the ground. Two fell on the house, one slicing through the roof.
“You couldn’t even see the house under the trees,” Dalleen says. “We live on one acre, it was covered in trees to the point where you couldn’t even see our neighbors, but when we went outside, it was all gone. Everything was wide open, and trees were down everywhere.”
The couple’s chicken coop was destroyed as well.
Dalleen and her husband, Rob, had lived at the home for 11 years and were ERIE Customers the entire time. This was the first time they’d needed to file a claim.
On top of the home and property damage, Dalleen was flustered and unsure how to handle it all.
It was Saturday when she placed her call to ERIE’s claims team. She was impressed to get an answer on a weekend and an explanation of what was to come.
She was told her adjuster, Josh Gordon, would be coming out on Tuesday. Come Monday, Josh was already on the scene.
“He was so apologetic for being early, but we had no cell service and power so he couldn’t call us,” she said.
“Josh was amazing. All weekend, it was like everyone was zombie-like. No one knew what to do. Not Josh, though. He was so confident, supportive and helpful. He gave such great explanations and always made sure we understood what was happening.”
Dalleen said she learned that Josh was dealing with his own challenges.
“[He did it] all while also dealing with damage to his own home, and living and working out of a hotel,” she said. “I mean, that’s some dedication. I was amazed to see how professional and empathetic he was.”
Dalleen notes that the mitigation team was there that day to help tarp up their home and protect it as best as possible. She said that the insurance money was in her account and the roof was replaced a week after the storm.
“It restored my faith in humans, honestly,” she said. “There are still homes with tarps all over them, roads are gone and our favorite places are washed away. But seeing how quickly ERIE responded and how amazing Josh was, it was a breath of fresh air. Seeing how quickly ERIE was on site, and how communities pulled together and helped everyone, it made us not feel so alone.”
Tommy Tedder, an auto claims adjuster, was driving in his neighborhood in Shelby, with his wife Catherine, days after the hurricane when he saw a woman gazing in disbelief at her home.
A tree had split it nearly in half down the middle. The woman, Dawn, told the Tedders she had lived in the house for two weeks when the storm struck.
She was without gas and had no way to pick up her medicine from the pharmacy.
“I looked at my wife, she looked at me, and we both said, ‘Get in, you’ll stay with us,” Tommy Tedder said.
“We had no idea she was new in town and didn’t know anyone.”
For the next three nights, Dawn stayed in the Tedders’ basement until she connected with her daughter and found a place to rent while her insurance sorted out her home.
“When someone is just standing there staring at what remains of their house and is willing to get in a stranger’s car and stay at their house, you really get a sense of the desperation they have.”
ERIE responded to the storm by surging resources, such as its catastrophe claims staff, and making accommodations for those struggling with payment of premiums. But it was ERIE personnel who came through in the biggest way.
Rosa Loftis, a district sales manager based in Asheville, along with peers from the Charlotte sales team, served Customers in hard-hit Burnsville days after the storm. Set up in an agency parking lot, employees handed out more than 200 lunches to affected Customers looking for a meal and guidance on their next steps.
“We did what we could,” Rosa said. “There was just so much gratitude from people who had lost everything just to see that other people were coming out and helping to provide these meals and listen to their needs.”
The Charlotte sales team and ERIE Agents also participated in a service project in Burnsville, gutting a house damaged by a mudslide, tearing it down so its owner could rebuild.
“We took the house down to the studs, there was about three feet of mud, dirt and debris that had piled up, and mold had to be removed throughout,” she said.
And when thousands lacked power, ERIE employees got resourceful to serve the needs of these Customers, as all Charlotte district sales managers earned temporary claims adjuster’s licenses to help hasten assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
FEMA typically requires a denial letter from insurance companies before it can verify eligibility for assistance.
But since many victims of the hurricane lacked power or access to a phone, they were often unable to make the recorded statements necessary to file a claim with ERIE. So, district sales manager Alia Marshall, Rosa and a group of their colleagues met with Customers to dictate statements.
For employees based in the area, keeping composure while their community struggled was often the hardest part, Rosa said. But their ERIE team’s effort was a source of pride.
This was something that we wanted to do as locals and human beings, and it was wonderful that we could go out and we could represent ERIE in the process,” Rosa said. “I was proud of everything we did.”
