Tales from the Field

The Appeal That Meant Everything

One of the proudest moments of my career came during an appeal inspection. The original inspector had written: “Applicant stated no damage - refused inspection.”

This note is not uncommon. People sometimes apply while evacuated “just in case,” then return home to find everything seemingly fine. Damage can show up later, which is why appeals exist. I expected a straightforward visit.

When I arrived at her apartment complex after a flooding event, I first tracked down the maintenance supervisor. He confirmed the entire first floor of the complex had taken about four feet of water. The applicant lived on the first floor - she had definitely been affected.

I met her at the door. Using the little Spanish I knew at the time, plus Google Translate, we completed the inspection and documented all her damages. She even had video of the floodwater inside her apartment, so the evidence was clear.

As I was leaving, this Cuban abuela hugged me with tears in her eyes.

Why had the first inspector marked “no damage” and refused the inspection? Most likely he simply did not want to deal with a Spanish-only applicant. That one extra effort on my part made a real difference for her.

My First Solo Inspection: Learning the Hard Way

My very first inspection on my own was for a family near the border, well after a hurricane. It was hard to tell exactly what damage was storm-related.

I was thorough - I photographed and recorded everything, leaving nothing out.

When I returned from that first deployment, my boss’s boss called me into his office. He greeted me with a big smile and called me “Santa Claus.” We went line by line through my report. Almost none of the damage in my photos was actually hurricane-related. I had essentially recommended giving the family around $50,000 for pre-existing issues.

He was not angry - he used it as a teaching moment. I learned an important early lesson about careful damage assessment, and I had a great leader who took the time to train me right.

The Man Who Survived the Wildfires in a Pond

During the California wildfires, I met an older gentleman who lived on top of a remote mountain. He did not evacuate in time.

He survived by climbing into his small decorative pond (only about 10 feet across), pulling a rowboat over himself for cover, and breathing through a short garden hose for roughly three hours while the fire raged around him.

When the flames died down, he emerged to find everything destroyed. The only thing that survived was a small solar-powered garden light. He used its glow to guide him eight miles down the mountain road back to town.

He was part of a larger off-grid community - several hundred people who had bought land decades earlier and built a tight-knit town of entrepreneurs and recluses. You would see incredible things there: massive folk-art sculptures, old tractors, and even a community dance hall. One resident built batteries that helped power many of the homes.

There was a single redwood tree in the area that had supposedly been topped decades earlier so loggers would not spot it from a distance. It was that kind of resourceful, resilient place.

Trump and the Boat in the Backyard

My first boat inspection took place on the east coast. I arrived at the address surprised to see that it was a boat yard. This guy lived on a boat. Boat inspections are fairly rare for most inspectors, so this was pretty cool.

The first thing he did was pull out his phone and show me a clip from The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. It showed Donald Trump standing in front of this man’s boat (which had ended up in someone’s backyard after the hurricane) saying, “Who’s boat is this? I want to know whose boat this is!”

That was hilarious.

I Have Never Been More Disappointed in People

A few years back, Chicago experienced some flooding that mostly affected below-grade garden apartments. Initially I was assigned to remote appeals. This means reviewing appeals from the office and increasing damages when justified.

The crazy thing was that nearly every appeal claimed about four feet of water in the apartment, while the on-site inspector had recorded only trace amounts. I was confused. How could such a massive discrepancy happen? Were the inspectors lying, or were the applicants? Or was something else going on?

I asked a co-worker who was on the ground. She confirmed that roughly 80 percent of the flooding was no more than trace amounts of water - basically nothing. Not long after I raised this with leadership, I was deployed for on-site appeals and saw it for myself. All four of my cases were almost certainly fraudulent.

In the most egregious case, what they claimed was a high-water mark was far more likely dog urine. They did not even bother moving the cage or the dog - he was still there, happy to see me. The applicant had some water on the floor, but it looked like she had simply emptied a water bottle. The empty bottle was still sitting there in plain sight.

Stay Away from Prichard

I was in Alabama for some tornado work and had a guy out in the middle of nowhere who was great the whole inspection. We chatted and shot the breeze. At the end he asked where I was heading next. I replied, “Mobile.”

He replied jovially, “Oh, well you better stay out of Prichard.”

Of course I asked why. He got quiet, leaned in real close, and whispered like he did not even want his wife to hear: “It’s full of Black people!”

That line killed me. I could not help but laugh. I was working in Prichard the next day. Prichard was fine.

Twisted in Alabama

This guy was a piece of work. I arrived at his mobile home and noted that the property sat about five miles from the tornado path, so I was already wondering what I could possibly find here. Flying debris that far is plausible, and power surges happen too.

Let me paint a picture of the property. This is an aging mobile home that has not seen maintenance in years. The area is rural, so he has a couple of acres full of old junk, chicken coops, dog kennels, and various other random rusting things.

First he takes me inside and shows me the water damage. He pointed out water damage under the sink, under the improperly installed in-window air conditioner, and yellow “water” damage around the base of the toilet. He showed me water damage throughout the home’s ceiling, then took me outside to see the exterior damage. A tree branch was on his roof, but it appeared to have been there for a long time. It looked like it had been placed there. I did not buy that at all. The tree it would have come from showed no signs of damage. He showed me a dresser that looked like it had sat in a kiddie pool for a day. Finally came the grand finale: his doors got knocked over by wind. Yes, doors. Piles of doors among the junk in his yard had fallen over, and I guess he thought that was worth money somehow. Oh, and the best part? The tornado occurred less than a week prior, and it had not rained since.

FEMA inspectors never start from the assumption that someone is lying or pulling a fast one. For me, the most common claims from a questionable applicant are water damage under the sink with no source other than the pipes, mold under an improperly installed in-window air conditioner, and claiming urine is “water damage.” If they claim one of these, they might just be confused about the program. Being confused is legal. You know what they say, though: two is a coincidence and three is a pattern. He well exceeded that standard.