On Friday afternoon, the St. Louis area was hit by a devastating tornado. The storm tracked for eight miles through residential and commercial neighborhoods and through the much-beloved Forest Park, an iconic and storied green space on the western edge of the city.
The storm was up to a mile wide in places and clocked winds of over 150 miles per hour. It’s been rated an EF3 tornado.
Those familiar with the areas hit watched in shock as images of the damage emerged. But as stunned as I was to see the images and video shared online Friday, nothing prepared me for the scope of what I saw when I traveled to the hardest hit area to attend a press conference Monday afternoon featuring Missouri Senator Josh Hawley (R), St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer (D), and other city officials: trees down everywhere; busy intersections with non-functioning traffic signals; broken windows; broken street lights; crumbled bricks; roofs torn off; the spire of a church lying crumpled on the ground.
The command center is set up at the corner of Kingshighway and Delmar in the city. Hawley began the conference by addressing the assembled press and then taking several questions.
Hawley highlighted two key points following his tour of the affected area:
“It’s good to be here. I’ve spent the last few hours on the ground, just walking, just going house to house up in Penrose, The Ville — just talking to people out on the street, meeting with their neighbors, hearing about what they’re going through. The devastation — I don’t have to tell you — is terrible. It is, I think, it is hard to capture in words; it is even harder to capture in some ways in images. You’ve really got to see it.
“And I had two things really strike me, coming out of this: Number One is that the federal government has a big role to play here, We need to get the federal government mobilized, and all federal resources that can be brought to bear here should be. All federal resources that are available need to come to this community. So, I look forward to working with the governor to get an emergency disaster declaration. I know the governor is at work on that. We talked to his team again this morning. Obviously, he wants to get that out the door as soon as possible — that needs to come quickly. When it does, we will immediately push it and ask the White House to expedite this so we can unlock disaster relief. I’d like to see individual assistance come as well. We need rebuilding funds for the communities, but we also need individual assistance…
“Number Two: To all of our friends in the insurance industry, I’ve got a message for you. You need to pay out claims. We need 100 percent of claims that are eligible to be paid out, and they need to be paid out in full. I have written to every insurance company, every insurer in the state over the weekend and put them on notice. I’m in the middle of an investigation right now in the Homeland Security Committee on insurance companies, including ones in this state, and their failure to pay out claims. This is a real acid test — if they want to make good, they need to pay out claims to every person who has been injured, every person who suffered damage. And that is so many people — there’s a lot of claims that need to be paid, and we will be tenacious. I have set up a hotline already at my Senate page — we have an email, hotline, we’ve got an online portal devoted. We are going to have a number set up so people can call us. I’ve been handing out my number left and right — I said, “If you can’t get your claims processed, you come to me.” I want to see these insurance companies pay out these claims. These folks are going to need it.”
As noted in his remarks, Hawley has recently been conducting an investigation into large insurers and some seemingly questionable claims practices on their part.
On Saturday, Hawley shared a copy of the letter he sent to insurers and referenced in his above comments.
Newly elected Mayor Cara Spencer then addressed the media, sharing details regarding actions city officials and community leaders are taking and resources available for the community.
The Executive Director of the Red Cross spoke and outlined the resources that they are providing for the community, including shelter and assistance with navigating the claims process. A representative from Ameren UE also spoke briefly and noted that there are still 30,000 people in the area without electricity, though they are working quickly to get it restored. He acknowledged that some may not be restored for several days. And in some instances, it’s not possible to restore power because of the level of damage caused to the structures.
Hawley then addressed the media again and answered a few more questions, including one from me.
MOORE: On the insurance question — since so much of it is governed by the state-level regulations, how do you envision your office and the federal government working with the state to make sure that they are actually complying?
HAWLEY: Well, a couple of things. Number one is that, regardless of who the regulator is, when a policyholder has a policy that says that they are eligible up to a certain amount, and you’ve got the insurance company that’s just flatly refusing to pay it, we’ve got a problem. But number two, we want to work with state enforcers, because it’s really the enforcers at the state level who can bring suit, whether it’s the state, those who oversee the insurance, and then also the attorney general. And I would love to see some suits for insurance fraud against the insurers. We sue in insurance fraud all the time against individuals, and hey, that’s fine. If you’re an individual and you’re trying to scam them, you should be prosecuted.
But what I have seen in my investigation is a systematic abuse of the insurance system where these companies know that they’re low-balling their claims and their policyholders, they know they’re not paying out, and they just keep doing it anyway. Those people ought to be sued, but they also ought to be prosecuted wherever possible, and we want to work with local and state enforcement authorities to see that that happens. Believe me — I have the power of the subpoena on the Homeland Security Committee. So I just say again to our friends in the insurance industry in Missouri, we love you, right up until you don’t pay your claims. And if you don’t pay your claims, you’re going to get a subpoena from me, and I hope you’ll hear from enforcement authorities. These people need their claims paid, and they need them paid immediately.
It’s going to take a long time, even with every ounce of federal assistance afforded and every insurance claim handled properly, before St. Louis will be back to some semblance of normal. The cleanup alone will take months. And with more storms set to roll in Monday and Tuesday, the situation is fraught. The fact that there will be added scrutiny of insurers and their claims practices by Senator Hawley and his committee may at least reassure St. Louisans that they will receive the benefit of the policies they’ve paid for.
