Hurricane Ida Response Project

On August 29^th, the 16^th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ida made landfall near the seaport of Port Fourchon in Louisiana. At its peak, Ida was a Category 4 hurricane making landfall with 150 mph winds – tied for the strongest hurricane in the state – and became the second most damaging aside from Hurricane Katrina.

Ida weakened steadily over land, but the remnants of the storm caused much fallout and destruction. More than a million people were left without electricity, and there was a significant amount of damage to infrastructure sustained in the post-storm flooding as well as tornadoes caused by the resulting weather and atmospheric conditions. Louisiana bore the brunt of the storm as it was located at the point of landfall. However, effects were felt throughout the southern US and eastern shore board with damage and even deaths recorded all the way to New York and New England.

Falvey Cargo Underwriting followed its own guidelines from our claims, loss prevention and recoveries team, ProTecht, for preparedness and emergency response. Here is how Falvey reacted quickly and proactively to the ongoing incident.

Preparedness General Guidelines

• Identify all facilities that may be in danger of increased exposure to natural disasters.
• Understand the risk facing each facility based on its location, condition, and operations.
• Establish a comprehensive emergency response preparedness plan for any possible event.
• Practice running preparedness drills to familiarize staff and ensure effectiveness.
• Update your procedures often based on practice results feedback and new or changing information.

In an effort to provide relevant informational updates to Falvey underwriters on specific locations and facilities, Falvey’s ProTecht team called on our internal systems for technical support. The first action was to run a system search of all the listed locations Falvey provides coverage for within the affected area. Although there were several states that were affected by the hurricane winds, flooding, and tornadoes spurred by the storm, we specifically identified the state of Louisiana as the target area for our analysis.

After exploring the map of location exposures listed in Louisiana, we identified four areas with the highest concentration of facilities. Those were the regions surrounding the metro areas of Shreveport, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans as indicated on the map below for reference.

At this point we utilized resources from NOAA and the USGS to track the path and severity of the flood zones and flood prone areas. The area surrounding Shreveport was noted as relatively low risk at that time while New Orleans and some of the facilities downstream of the Mississippi River below Baton Rouge were experiencing significant flooding risk. ProTecht overlayed live news updates such as satellite imaging from the below map provided by NOAA, which provided a clear understanding of the risk for our facilities.  

We filtered all locations in the state for proximity to flood prone areas, a value threshold, and several other criteria to assign a “ProTecht Risk Score”. This tool included all of the information an underwriter might need to evaluate the risk and reach out to an assured as well as a summary of each location citing type of goods, any COPE obtained from the underwriting file, including storage arrangement (if available), and any other relevant information. The process allowed ProTecht to report and monitor the unfolding situation.

The Hurricane Ida Response Project is just one example of how ProTecht provides proactive loss prevention services to our clients. Please contact Falvey Cargo Underwriting for more information on taking the same approach to the loss prevention practices of your business operations at insure@falveycargo.com.

Hurricane Ida - Wikipedia

USGS WaterWatch -- Streamflow conditions

NOAA - National Weather Service - Water - State

Hurricane IDA Imagery (noaa.gov)