Hurricane Laura

9/25/2020 (Permalink)

The Path & Damages

It's been nearly one month since powerful Category 4 Hurricane Laura made landfall on the Louisiana coastline. According to Wikipedia, Laura was the tenth-strongest hurricane to make landfall on the U.S. by landfall wind speed record. This intense storm has caused over $10 billion in damages in Louisiana, Texas, the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. 

Our Response

The storm was slow moving, but our response was fast. One of the two SERVPRO storm teams activated an all call asking for any franchises willing to travel for this storm event to get ready. Some franchises were able to travel ahead of the storm and stage just outside the projected path. SERVPRO of Anniston, Gadsden and Marshall County sent a sales rep, a production manager and two crews to the Lake Charles area of Louisiana. Our staff in Louisiana had to stay 2 plus hours away from Lake Charles since there was no power or water. These individuals have worked hard and still are, working around curfews and utility workers.

Back here in Alabama, our Marketing Coordinator calls and sets appointments for the sales rep and production manager to provide free estimates to the calls dispatched to our crews traveling for storm. Our sales rep and production manager sign up these customers for services and work is scheduled to begin. For many of these homes a tree service was needed to remove the tree from the structure so we could tarp the roof to prevent further damage.

The  99-100% humidity and heat were an issue for the first few weeks. Crews have been rotating out every 2 weeks to keep them fresh and prevent burnout or injury. It has been a slower progressing storm event that most of the ones our franchise has participated in over the last few years, but helping those in need has been so rewarding. Just when things seemed like they may calm down, Hurricane Sally hit (but that's a whole other story). 

Today one of the crews came home for a break and another will head out tomorrow to take their place. As a franchise that participates in many of the storm events, we love that SERVPRO is one big family committed to helping each other.