O'FALLON, Mo. — Close to 8,500 claims, and that is only the Missouri report from State Farm after hail pounded the bi-state last week.
State Farm is one of the major insurance companies on the ground in O'Fallon Missouri to help their local adjusters evaluate hail damage. With a large RV, generators and a giant tent in the background, State Farm Catastrophe Claim Team Manager Alisa Thomas tells 5 On Your Side, "when we have this amount of claims and we want to help our customers as quickly as possible, yes we do bring this out."
Thomas' team is in the overflow parking lot of CarShield Field, off TR Hughes Boulevard. Just down the road, Farmers and American Family Insurance are camped out at Home Depot.
"We'll probably be here for a couple weeks," Aaron Mitchell with American Family Insurance Catastrophe Operations told 5 On Your Side. "We have a couple thousand claims and customers to get to."
Both locations are set up to handle a large volume of customers. Appointments are required for both.
"We start as early as 7am and our last appointment is around 6 p.m.," Thomas said.
"The best way for the customers to get their vehicles inspected here is to contact their local agent and file a claim and schedule an appointment," Mitchell explained.
There are even virtual appointments available. "With the size of the hail and the severity of the damage, we are seeing a lot of total losses," says Mitchell, "and with that we are, if the vehicle is repairable, issuing the checks on site and if they are a total loss, we are settling it with them on site here too."
Thomas said State Farm is doing the same thing, "We take care of them in payment, by digital payment and any form they may want."
The catastrophe teams expect to help anywhere from 100 to 150 customers per day.
Mitchell says, "As they come into the drive in here, a lot of them have broken sunroofs and back glass, so we actually have some crash wrap that we'll put over those areas to prevent any water from leaking in until they can get the vehicle into a body shop for repairs."
Both Mitchell and Thomas said their teams will be here until the need dies down.