‘One of the most catastrophic events I’ve seen’: Insurance deploys agents for Spokane fire damage claims

A cluster of north Spokane insurance agencies, impacted by weekend Old Trails fire evacuations, has relied on limited staffing to service more than double their regular volume of client claims.

“The majority of our customers in my book are in those areas and communities most impacted by these fires right now. So, it’s been substantial,” said north Spokane State Farm owner and agent Layne Stoops.

Hemmed in by road closures on Francis to the south and Division to the east, evacuation mandates prompted many insurance employees to field client calls remotely rather than coming in for work on Monday and Tuesday.

Stoops said he was able to enter the north Francis State Farm office on Sunday, but that he was stopped by law enforcement on his way.

“You don’t expect your office in the middle of the city to actually get in the middle of a wildfire zone,” said All Lines Insurance owning partner Chris Roberts, who has a couple of employees who have lost their homes.

The Country Homes neighborhood north of Francis downgraded from a mandatory Level 3 to a Level 2 evacuation warning on Monday evening and remained there as of Thursday.

On Monday alone, Stoops saw “more than double what we typically see as far as inbound and dozens of active claims with lost homes already.”

“And they’re still coming in. This is one of the most catastrophic events I’ve seen as an agent,” he said.

North Spokane agents have seen periods where their firms were flooded with natural disaster-related claims, but the volume received from burned property this week is exceptional.

“We’ve had a couple windstorms and some fires, but even three years ago, the Oregon Road and the Great Lake fire … were not, at least what I saw in my office, not to this scale,” Stoops said.

“For Washington state, I mean, this is truly the first of its kind. We’ve had wildfires in the past, but nothing of this scale,” said State Farms proximity fire claims section manager Necia Riddell.

Per request of state Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer, the Northwest Insurance Council released a statement Wednesday to announce that Spokane’s insurance firms would deploy emergency agents and mobile claims operations to two regional insurance “farms.”

To meet demand, State Farm, among many other firms, requested additional support from emergency claim representatives dispatched regionally to handle the unprecedented claim volume.

Several insurance firms, including State Farm, All Lines, USAA, Farmers, MAPFRE, PEMCO and others, set up service stations in the parking lot of Shadle Park High School and Lowe’s in Spokane Valley to serve north Spokane members Thursday morning.

Although the insurance farms are set to remain in place from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. from Thursday through Sunday, several agents anticipate their firms’ mobile operations will stay for longer while their dispatched support personnel will stay in Spokane to handle claims in the long term.

“We anticipate that we’re gonna be here for the next potential six months to a year,” Riddell said.

Emergency claims personnel present on Thursday morning shared a recognition that in times of loss, policyholders navigating complex bureaucracy for the first time require in-person support from an agent who has experience dealing with natural disaster recovery.

“We deploy mobile-ly … so that our customers can come in person and file a claim or ask questions … and understand what the process is,” said Farmers insurance agent Luis Sahagun. “So, we have some of our most experienced claim representatives here … our people can share their experience with them and … provide some comfort to them, provide them money up front if they need some additional living expenses.”

By Thursday, State Farm had received more than 500 home and auto claims and expected the number to grow once evacuations are lifted.

Kuderer, who was present at Shadle Park on Thursday morning to recognize claims personnel for their services, issued an emergency order this week to endow consumers with additional rights during their property loss recovery period. The protections ensure that Spokane policyholders impacted by fire damage maintain access to insurance despite past-due premium payments.

North Spokane agents agree that as they reconcile lost assets and damaged property from the wildfires, their clients are looking at a long road to recovery that could strain Spokane housing construction in the coming years.

“We had … at least 600 structures burnt to the ground in the … last two days. That’s a lot of process,” Roberts said on Monday morning. “You’re going to have to find contractors to build the homes that were all replaced. They’re all burnt to the ground. So, it’s going to take years.”

“I have been through this in Oregon where they had fires in 2020 that burned 4,000 homes within a matter of two days,” Brine said. “And what happens when you have a concentrated disaster like this is that access to contractors – and those contractors’ access to subcontractors and all their access to materials – is all tightened and made more difficult.”

As Level 3 evacuation mandates remain in place near Five Mile Prairie and Indian Trail due to activity from the Old Trails and Autumn Lane fires , Brine anticipates that insurers won’t be able to estimate damages until the dust settles.

“So, there may come a time in the next week or so when we can more accurately assess what the dollar values of the properties are, but it’s a little too soon to say right now,” he said, noting that insurance agencies often partner with fire departments to assess damages using aerial drones.

Indian Trail Neighborhood residents Leah and Andres Armendariz were at Shadle Park on Thursday morning to consult a mobile insurance agent after the loss of their house on Prosperity Lane.

The couple had lived in the house for seven years.

“It’s been very chaotic,” said Leah, who has had to navigate the facets of filing an insurance claim after evacuating her family to Andres’s parents’ house. “In some ways, it feels like a full-time job, so we can’t grieve the loss that we had … Calls and touching base with everybody that we need to – insurance, family, friends, you know, it’s just a constant thing where you can’t even sit down and process anything. So, that’s probably been the hardest.”

“Staying positive for the kids … trying to be a pillar,” Andres added.

From the perspective of a homeowner, Leah acknowledged the difficulty of “finding somebody that can help us walk through insurance that’s not gonna cost us an arm and a leg,” while “trying to make the smart decisions … to make sure that your family’s gonna be OK.”

“It’s hard because it feels like we’re kind of walking into this blind,” she said.

Andres noted that houses just one block over in their neighborhood were preserved.

After evacuating, the couple contacted the Red Cross and Salvation Army, which were both present for the Shadle resource fair on Thursday alongside other humanitarian aid organizations. Leah noted that with annual wildfire destruction, “one thing that Spokane probably needs is more resources for events like this.”

The Armendariz family and their neighbors were safely evacuated on Saturday.

“We’re here to help … others that were also affected, you know, it’s not just us,” Andres said.

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