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.