Homeowners Be Aware

From Ruin to Recovery A Survivor's Tale of Hurricane Sandy with Doug Quinn

• George Siegal • Season 2 • Episode 131

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April 16, 2024

131.  From Ruin to Recovery A Survivor's Tale of Hurricane Sandy with Doug Quinn

Get ready to explore the often-overlooked aftermath of natural disasters—battling insurance. Doug Quinn, a Hurricane Sandy survivor, shares his harrowing seven-year journey through the bureaucratic labyrinth of insurance claims, emphasizing the vital need for readiness. Doug's background in insurance adds a layer of irony to his struggle as he unveils the harsh realities many homeowners face post-disaster. This episode isn’t just about the battle against nature’s fury but also the ensuing war for rightful aid and the unanticipated personal toll it takes on mental health and community bonds. Join us as we unravel Doug’s extraordinary story, highlighting the importance of solidarity and advocacy in the face of adversity.

 

Here’s how you can follow or reach Doug Quinn:

 

Website: https://unitedsurvivorsrelief.org/ 

 

Website: https://apassociation.org/ 

 

Instagram: instagram.com/unitedsurvivorsdisasterrelief/  

 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apassociation_official/  

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnitedSurvivorsDisasterRelief  

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theapassociation   

 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/united-survivors-disaster-relief/

 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-policyholder-association/ 

 

Important information from Homeowners Be Aware:

Here are ways you can follow me on-line:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeownersbeaware/

Website: https://homeownersbeaware.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-siegal/


If you'd like to reach me for any reason, here's the link to my contact form:

https://homeownersbeaware.com/contact

Here's the link to the trailer for the documentary film I'm making: Built to Last: Buyer Beware.

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Thanks for listening!

George Siegal:

Having your house wiped out by a disaster is not a comfortable conversation to have with someone. Most of us probably don't think it will ever happen to us, but when it does, it changes your life forever, and the road back to normal is a long one. My guest today is Doug Quinn. He was a victim of Hurricane Sandy, which hit New Jersey back in 2012. It took seven years for him to get back in his house and, as you will learn today, it's an experience you never want to have. Once you hear his story, my hope is you will take some type of action and try to prevent it from happening to you. I'm George Siegal, and this is Homeowners Be Aware, the podcast that teaches you everything you need to know about being a homeowner. Doug, thank you so much for joining me today.

Doug Quinn:

Thank you for having me, George.

George Siegal:

Yeah, you ended up being and people will see when Built the Last Buyer Beware comes out one of the stars of the film. I want to thank you for being in our documentary film and sharing your story, but for people who aren't familiar with it, you were a victim in Hurricane Sandy and that was a really major turning point in your life, wasn't it?

Doug Quinn:

It was. I mean, I just you know I had a hosy life before then a single financial advisor making good money living on the beach, and basically this came in and it upended my whole world. I mean, obviously I allowed it to a degree, but there are many things that were out of my control and we've learned things that would curl your hair.

George Siegal:

Now, as somebody who's learned so much, let's just go back before that, when you were living in this house and you knew you're on the East Coast and there are hurricanes, there are nor'easters, there are all kinds of bad things that can happen. Did those ever enter your thought process?

Doug Quinn:

100%. I mean I come out of the insurance world, I'm a financial advisor for three decades, so I am very risk management oriented. So you know, obviously I had researched. The house had been built in the late fifties. It had never flooded once during that time. But just to be safe, you know, I bought the maximum legal amount of flood insurance that I could buy. I mean, if I could have bought more, I would have bought more. I only had to buy enough to cover my mortgage. I bought double that amount. And you know, look, I looked at the patterns Is there? Is this a significant flood risk? Look, I looked at the patterns. Is this a significant flood risk? It did not appear to be, since there had been no flooding for 60 plus years. And then I then went further and insured myself, transferring the risk to be on the cautious side.

George Siegal:

Did you ride out the storm in your house or did you evacuate?

Doug Quinn:

I rode out until the water got to about my ankles or close to my knees, out until the water got to about my my ankles or close to my knees. Uh, I had evacuated the year before we had hurricane irene come through. You know they said that was going to be the end, all be all. I evacuated and it, you know just it came into the street in front of my house. It wasn't that big of a deal and I was kind of regretted, like abandoning my house. So I said when sandy came, you know again, here's the next end, all be all. Uh, I'm going to stay there, coming through with, uh, you know, evacuating our neighborhood. And I just said I'm going to stay, stick it out. And uh, you know that literally did turn out to be the end, all be all.

George Siegal:

Now, what would you say the mindset of your neighbors are? I mean, I have a kind of a similar living situation in that I live in Tampa, Florida, and we're the next big bullseye that everybody always talks about. But I would say there's a very complacent attitude from a lot of my neighbors. Most people don't think it's going to happen to them. Most of them don't have generators. Most of them probably don't have a plan. What did you find in your neighborhood? Were people caught off guard? Were they surprised? This is the cost of living in paradise. Were people caught off guard?

Doug Quinn:

Were they surprised, were they? This is the cost of living in paradise. Nobody expected it. I mean, new Jersey doesn't get hit with a lot of hurricanes and again, this neighborhood hadn't flooded basically since it was built, so no one expected it. Nobody was prepared, and we have a lot of elderly people in our neighborhood and a lot of them, because it's on the water, are second homes down here on the Jersey Shore. On the water are second homes down here on the Jersey shore. So most people evacuated, but I don't think they were prepared for any of the other facets in terms of protecting their property. So we were all sort of caught by surprise at the ferocity of the storm and how hard it hit us.

George Siegal:

Okay, so Sandy blows through, you have major damage. What was your thought right after the storm? Were you optimistic that, hey, I have this coverage, I'm going to be okay, we're going to be on our feet again. What was your thought process?

Doug Quinn:

legal amount of insurance. I'm good. It's going to be four to six months of difficult times. It's going to be, you know, it's going to suck, to be fair, uh, for about four or five months or so, and then I'll be up and running because I did the right thing and I paid for insurance, um, and I really had no way I mean to the point where I had a land that it was hard to find.

Doug Quinn:

You know you have. You have tens of thousands of people out of their homes. It's hard to find a decent rental, and I had a 15 year old daughter with me trying to be careful about what neighborhood I'm in, what kind of quality of a house that I'm in, and so it took me. I mean we lived out of our car for a month and it took me probably you know that time to find a decent place for us to live in, a rent to rent.

Doug Quinn:

And the landlord wanted a year lease and I was like no way I got a quarter million dollars of flood insurance. I will be home in four or five months. And the way I compromised with him was like I'll tell you what if I pay you, because I was afraid of going back home and owing this guy another six months on the lease. So I was like if I pay you a hundred dollars a month extra and you'll let me go month to month, we did that and I paid that man a hundred dollars a month extra for seven years. It took me seven to get home.

George Siegal:

Now would you say you believe you might've been one of those people that just fell through the cracks, or are you more typical of how the insurance company just doesn't care?

Doug Quinn:

You know I can't say either of those cases are 100% true. I will say under no circumstances will I allow myself to fall through the cracks. Okay, I'm educated, I'm an investment financial professional. I know a lot about the insurance world. You know, I'm a Marine Corps veteran. I fight everything. I live in investment financial professional. I know a lot about the insurance world. You know, I'm a Marine Corps veteran. I fight everything. I live in an area of the country where we are very comfortable fighting and advocating for ourselves.

Doug Quinn:

So I would not allow myself to fall through the cracks. I did push, I did fight, I did advocate for myself. And nor would I say the other end, that the insurance industry doesn't care. Look, there are a lot of really good people in the insurance industry, people who take pride in what they do, people who take pride in being able to show up with a check at your lowest moment. But it only takes a few to gum up the whole works and what we see is there's people that are straight out greedy and straight out fraudulent and they are actually looking to enrich themselves by taking advantage of others and skewing the system, tilting the table against the consumer in order to get the insurance company's favor, get contracts, get jobs, get promotions, and it doesn't take a lot of those people to really have a negative impact on the consumer's experience.

George Siegal:

So if I hadn't met you, and I hadn't met a lot of people that have experienced bad things like you have, it would be very hard to wrap my head around how in the world could it take seven years to take care of you?

Doug Quinn:

So what happens is you know the way it should work and that way it has worked for people. It's not like everybody gets cheated. There were people that had good experiences. You know, you put in your claim, you basically cash your check, you rebuild your home and you go on your merry way. Now, what are all the things that can go wrong at every step of the way? On those, first, let's say this you know you go to cash your check and maybe you don't have the experience that all the TV commercials tell you.

Doug Quinn:

You know, my insurance company offered me 37 cents on the dollar. They sent an engineering firm out here to say that this was not flood damage, it was earth movement, which is shifting of the supporting soils, and by the, that's what cracked my foundation and flooded my house with four feet of water. And they, by the way, earth movement is a convenient exclusion from flood insurance the shifting of the soils, even though the soils might've shift from thousands of tons of water landing on it. But that's, you know what they said. So my insurance company offered me 37 cents on the dollar. And I'm thinking because, again, I grew up in the insurance industry they just don't get it. I just it's a mistake. I just got to explain it to them the right way. I just got to show them the right pictures. They don pictures. And it took me a long time to come from where I was a big firm believer that everything works out happily ever after for insurance consumers to wow this is not an accident, this is a plan, this is a strategy that people have in place. So you know, working through that process, the insurance piece you know turned out to be an absolute battle nightmare.

Doug Quinn:

And then finding a builder is difficult because, again, you're in an area I love these things where people are like use a local builder, because the outside guys, the storm chasers, are fraudsters. The guy in your neighborhood who builds five houses a year is not putting 100,000 people back home anytime soon. You do not have enough organic capacity to repair all those properties, so you have to bring people in. And, by the way, what zip code you live in does not determine whether you're more likely to commit fraud or not. We had a guy right here in our own town that was around for 20 years. He was the basketball coach. You know he stole a couple of million dollars and left the state from people. You know so, but there is challenges finding a builder and, by the way, do you know anything about building a house from scratch? I don't, most people don't. I don't know what a roof costs. I don't know what it's like where I should pay to demo my own property. I don't know what a roof costs. I don't know what it's like where I should pay to demo my own property. I don't know what are good windows. There's, like so many of the decision trees, so that becomes difficult.

Doug Quinn:

And then the next step is, you know, you, improvements and having the right amount of setback around the property. I mean, it's nightmare, nightmare, nightmare. And in the meantime, you know, I'm trying to raise a teenage daughter. I'm trying to, you know, put a decent roof over her house. I'm trying to make a living and pay the bills, and I'm doing all this and all these fights and all these battles and all these things that I'm in no position to buy, suited by nature or education or experience to do. I'm doing all this.

Doug Quinn:

We call it the decision paradox. You are, you know, a thousand decisions are suddenly heaped on your plate, and I'm doing this while traumatized and not in the best frame of mind and not in a good position. And that's the decision trauma paradox. When you have a significant loss like that, the amount of decisions that are heaped on your plate, you know, go up tenfold. And there are decisions in areas you're not used to making those decisions. How do I build a house? What's the right kind of windows? You know what I mean. How do I negotiate with the town for permits and setbacks and code, and how do I find the right builder? How do I not get you know, all of these things fall in. And that's happening while your decision-making ability is compromised. We see very smart people make very dumb decisions.

Doug Quinn:

So for me, I did what many trauma survivors do slow it down. You know, like I'm not comfortable making this decision. I don't have confidence. Slow it down and whereas, you know, I wound up having to go through a grant program and get money from the federal government which burned me. I should have just got money from my insurance that I paid for. Should I have to rely on taxpayer money for this? It's, you know, it's really unconscionable that that happens. But basically what happens? I should have been planning the building of my house, while all you know that was a multi-year process, except I'm doing things in like a linear method Well, I'm going to make this decision and then I'm going to make that decision, and then, once I have the things in, like a linear method, well, I'm going to make this decision and then I'm going to make that decision, and then, once I have the money in my hands, then I'll do this Like I, you know.

Doug Quinn:

So part of it was I wasn't able to do better. Part of it was the system was dysfunctional. Part of it were many things were going wrong. Part of it was I was way in over my head and again doing that in an environment of trauma where I'm just kind of baby, stepping along and look, dealing with depression. I had days I couldn't get out of bed and again, I'm an aggressive person, I'm a high energy person. That's not me. So you know, we see what these survivors go through and they have no idea what's on the horizon for them.

George Siegal:

Now, when you talk about all the weight of all those decisions and how you have to do that, to me that seems like that's a reason. A lot of people get ripped off when they would assign their benefits to somebody that they thought could handle all that and take it off their shoulders. So it's really a conflict there. It's like, wow, I can't do all this stuff. Let me find somebody who can. But you might be turning that over to somebody who doesn't have your best interest at heart.

Doug Quinn:

And that can happen all the way around Any business transaction. You have a possibility that somebody doesn't have your best interest at heart, but disaster zones tend to bring those people like flies to you know what. And look, I know a lot of people did very well with assignment of benefits. I didn't see that here, you know, in Sandy I wasn't even aware of the term until we started watching it have problems in Florida, because again it takes it off like well, now I don't have to go fight my insurance company. Here's a company that does it every day and they'll do it. And, granted, people did take advantage of it.

Doug Quinn:

I think it was kind of the impact was overblown. I think the was kind of the impact was overblown. I think the insurance industry has a great strategy of playing victim and then they wind up, you know, getting well, it's so much easier to deal with a traumatized homeowner who's never done this before than it is to deal with a construction company who does this every day and knows what things actually cost and can advocate for you and can say no, that's not a $4,000 roof, that's a $10,000 roof. So I think it makes it very easy for the insurance industry to cut those people out. They seem to have a strategy of cutting out the attorneys, the public adjusters, the contractors, who are all aligned with the consumer at the time of a claim, and then just making it so it is just the consumer one-on-one. Never done this before and traumatized on top of that.

George Siegal:

Is their lobbying group as powerful in New Jersey as it is in Florida? Because they pretty much seem to run the legislature down here.

Doug Quinn:

They run the I mean a majority of the state of Florida. The leadership I mean I can't necessarily say because we don't. You know, what I've seen in New Jersey during Sandy was an incredible Disappointment on the part of our elected officials our governor, who promised he'd be with us till we got home and then left the state to go run for president. Our insurance commissioner and Department of Insurance, our attorney general, who sat on their hands and did nothing while we all suffered and we knew tens of thousands of people were getting taken advantage of. And look again, I grew up in the insurance industry. If somebody said to me I'm calling the insurance department on you, I wouldn't have slept for a month. If that happens, because they're this aggressive department that's going to come down and protect the consumer. And then, when the time came, they did nothing.

Doug Quinn:

And to be fair, flood insurance is regulated on a federal level. It's under the NFIP, is under the Department of FEMA, it's a FEMA responsibility. But that does not mean that the insurance department of my state should not should have been advocating for us. And they did not. They literally sat on their ends. So you know, was that because of a lobby? Or maybe just because of a lack of, you know, bureaucratic lack of effectiveness. You know, we really didn't start digging into the impact of the insurance lobby until we watched Florida start to blow up. And then we're like, wow, this is egregious.

George Siegal:

I remember the image of Chris Christie's career going down the toilet when he hugged Obama on the tarmac and that image of it, which which to me OK that's that was not a great optic for Republicans. But to me the governor should be advocating for people, but it sounds like he kind of bailed on you guys, in your opinion anyway. So it doesn't sound like there's any victory.

Doug Quinn:

The only true satisfaction is getting your house fixed. Yeah, and look, to be fair, somebody hugged a president who's from the opposite party. This is what we're supposed to do in a crisis we come together and we put our differences aside and we work to help our citizens. So I thought that was. Look, he hugged the guy. That's great. He hugged a bunch of victims that's great. You know he really was on point in the beginning, but you know he was doing the right thing. But then again it came to like well, I've got all these people who aren't home yet from this disaster, but I can go chase my own political career and be president. That's where he went off the rails.

George Siegal:

Yeah, that's probably pretty common. So when you look back now, you finally get back in your house. Did you ever get the fair amount from the insurance, or was it cobbled together other ways? So I know it took seven years and it was horrible, but did you eventually, with persistence, get what you were entitled to? Or did you come away going, wow, I took seven years and those guys still screwed me.

Doug Quinn:

No, I got. I got enough to build a nice house here, okay, but it's you know, the analogy I use is it's like the Shawshank redemption, right? You look at the end of the movie and there's Morgan Freeman walking on the Mexican beach to Andy and it's paradise, and he's finishing up his old boat and it's amazing, and they're going to live happily ever after. And would you take that if I told you what he had to do to get there 20 years in prison, getting raped, getting beat, his friends getting murdered, having to call through a 500-yard tunnel of shit to get to that point? So you could look at the point I'm at now and say and it impacted, you know my other responsibilities. You know, my daughter was 15, really needed a 100% dad, not a 50% dad, because I'm fighting all of this. You know, my parents each got sick and died during that time. They needed a 100% son, not a 25% son, because I'm here doing this.

Doug Quinn:

So you know, and of course, all of the damage I did to personal relationships because I'm trauma, I mean literally, I considered that disaster to be a form of mental illness, because I really was just, you know, having mood swings and mental health issues and you know temper issues. I can't go in to the local branch of my bank. I am banned for life because I had a disagreement with the manager over something silly and rather than do what I know to do, which is let's find a way to work out a compromise, where everyone I blew up in the middle of the bank and she said leave, if you ever come back I will call the police. And it's 10 years later and that still exists. And then same thing. I'm working with our governor's team trying to.

Doug Quinn:

You know, we did a lot with advocating for the other survivors, calmly educating him Like that's an insensitive thing to say about the people who've gone through such a trauma and aren't being treated well by their state government. I blew up, I'm cursing in front of female I mean, it was just inappropriate and I had to go outside and collect myself and come in and apologize. And that's not me, either of those instances. That's not me. You know what I mean.

George Siegal:

I was going to say I'm glad I didn't piss you off in our interview, but I can't even imagine I've met victims not as many as you have, but it just I see how they're changed by the disaster and what that does and I don't think it's like you're in an exclusive club that people don't really understand if they're not in it because they haven't lived through what you're living through.

Doug Quinn:

Right and you will never be the same. That's what we tell people. You know, stop trying, cause I kept thinking I gotta just get back. I can't wait, you know. I remember, you know, meeting my current girlfriend, and I can't wait for you to meet who I really am. This is not me, you know. I can't wait to get back to when life was normal, and there is no going back. You will be changed forever and for these people, there is a line in their life, before the disaster, after the disaster, and you will never be the same. The best you can do is pick up the pieces, learn your lessons, put things back together as best you can and go forward. But that's the idea People don't understand.

Doug Quinn:

They don't. People are, you know, like, if you're looking, we try to tell people in cat zones now, like if you see your spouse, you know, using drugs or drinking way more than they did, or losing their temper, having mood swings, or, you know, pulling the covers under their head till three o'clock over their head, till three o'clock in the afternoon in bed, and you know that's not them, that's trauma and we want to, you know, explain that to people because of the fact that they don't think they're. Just think, oh well, I'm a terrible person. You know, I almost got into a fight in Dunkin Donuts over a parking spot with somebody. Again, that's not me, and I just wish somebody had come in before and say, look, you're going to see these things. It's trauma, it's not. You Give yourself a break, breathe back up and think you know, is this really who I want to be right now? Or is this possibly the trauma?

George Siegal:

speaking, and I need to, you know, do some self-care to alleviate that. So how do we fix this? Because it seems like to me insurance is is like when you go to the casino and there's a lot of places you can buy chips, at any table, any game, the money's thrown at you, but there's only a few places you can collect it. You have to walk to the back of the casino and get in line to get your money, whatever you want to leave with. That's what insurance seems like to me. It's not easy to get back what you're entitled to. You have to work for it, and that just doesn't seem right. How do we fix that?

Doug Quinn:

I don't necessarily like the gambling analogy with insurance or investment.

George Siegal:

But it is a gamble.

Doug Quinn:

But I will say this the guy sitting out front on the boardwalk hawking, you know, like hey, come in, make a million dollars, you know that's a different person than the dealer and the person who's supposed to pay you out your chips, the people you know, all the TV commercials and flow and the gecko and all this stuff, or your local agent, who is a decent person and does, you know, volunteer in the community, and you do see them in the grocery store on Saturday. They want that policy to pay just as much as you because they got to look you in the eye and they believe it's going to pay. But your agent and they do not, and the Gecko and Flo don't pay your claims, they don't handle your claims. That's a whole other department that in many cases isn't even part of your insurance company. It's a third party TPA, third party administrator that they hired to handle their claims.

Doug Quinn:

It's an engineering firm and that's where we see a lot of the crime occur. There's check writer bias on the part of these companies and the way we fix it is by enforcement, is by a deterrent. We have to have, you know, these actual people have to be investigated and prosecuted. Handcuffs so fast. Your head would spin. If the insurance company spends, spills $20,000 for you by changing a report, or one of the vendors they've hired does it, they need to go to jail as well, and that's not what we're seeing happening.

George Siegal:

Yeah, that's why I like the gambling analogy. Where I think it works is only because you just don't know what's going to happen. You're just you, you. You throw your money down hoping you're going to win. But with insurance it's almost like they have a plan to make it as difficult as possible. I've dealt with this with health insurance. I've dealt with it on smaller claims, I've had flooding, but nothing like what you've lived through. And it's always that feeling of you feel like you're a criminal trying to pull something on them, when you're really just trying to get what you thought you were entitled to when you were paying them all that money.

Doug Quinn:

Right and you're not. You know there is no winning. It's a contractual obligation. It's for you to get what you've paid for. You paid for years and decades sending checks in. You never had a problem. Now, when it's time for you to get reimbursed for a legitimate loss, all of a sudden there's problems. And when you say there's a plan, you are correct. There is a plan and I you know there's a right.

Doug Quinn:

Here in Jersey there's a Rutgers law professor named Jay Feynman who wrote a book called Delay Deny Defend and he specifically lays out the plan that the insurance companies hired a consultant firm, a really high-edge consultant firm, and said you know it's a flat market, how do we juice our profits up? And one of the things they did was they focused in on the claims department as a profit center. You know, insurance is a zero-sum solution. If I pay you a dollar or I lose a dollar, how do I not pay you that dollar? Or how do I only pay you 50 cents on that dollar? And you know the strategy which has been defined as delay deny defend actually is a plan. They've actually used it to train their claims personnel. There is a PowerPoint out there that specifically shows how to do that and it's a problem because it went from. You know, how are we in the business of demnifying people for losses or making sure they're made whole for everything they're entitled to to? How do we put corporate profits ahead of the welfare of our consumers?

George Siegal:

So in a perfect world for them, you might've gone away after a couple of years just because you would have realized, eh, I got to move on. And that's what they hope. A lot of people do is just move on.

Doug Quinn:

And most people do, because that's they call that and they've actually done studies. You know it's called capitulation where after a certain period of time six or nine months the average person you just want to find just give me whatever. You know. I've I've saw it as a financial advisor, people who had lawsuits, and a lot of the ideas with these physical injury lawsuits are you know, they stretch it out. They stretch it out for three and five years. So if you, you might start out being like I'm not settling for less than $10 million, go live on disability for five years and see what happens and you'll settle for, you know, $12 and a half a tuna for sandwich.

Doug Quinn:

I mean that because people just can't take it anymore. It is a living nightmare and you wind up neglecting so many other areas of your life. You neglect your kids, you neglect your relationship, you neglect your job and the cost is huge to fight one of the most powerful industries in the country. It is a big, big cost and it's an incredible commitment and the average person is not suited to have that fight.

George Siegal:

Yeah, and my state just did something which I think is just. It makes me sick to think about, although they defend it is if you have to sue your insurance company, you no longer get attorney's fees. So now these guys can bully you into court, knowing if you win you still won't have enough money to fix your house because you're not going to pay the guy you had to drag in. And the insurance industry actually defends that as being good for the consumer because it'll stop litigation. To me it just screws the guy who's a victim.

Doug Quinn:

It has done absolutely zero to stop litigation. It has done absolutely zero to stop the premiums from going up. I mean, this was the big promise because Florida especially, you know premiums were going up. Premiums are going up. It's these greedy lawyers. And we kept asking you know, look, I don't like lawyers any much as anybody else. I have some personal friends who are lawyers. I respect for them, but as a category, I think the insurance industry landed on that. Who do people hate almost as much as insurance companies? Lawyers. Let's blame it all on them.

Doug Quinn:

And it's frivolous litigation. We kept saying OK, well, if you're a plaintiff's attorney and you only get paid if you win the case, how does it help you to file an illegitimate case? How does it help you If the consumer doesn't get paid? You don't get paid, it's a contingency payment. So, and then no one can explain. Give me the statistics.

Doug Quinn:

How many cases in Florida were thrown out because they were flivolent? How many cases were dismissed because they were just unjust and had no factual grounds? No one will answer that question because, again, it's not to their advantage. And then, since they took away your right to recover your legal fees, you know if you sue your insurance company and they are found to have illegitimately cheated you on a claim that shouldn't come out of your pocket. That should come out of their pocket.

Doug Quinn:

But you know the end result is they took that away and and even the insurance commissioner of Florida has made a statement that said litigation was never the sole reason for premiums going up. Litigation was never the sole reason for all these companies going under. Not a single company has been cited as having excessive or frivolous litigation as a reason why it went under. And, by the way, they're claiming victory because six or so new insurance companies came in after that law went away, but some of them were already on the drawing board before and I don't think it had anything to do with that law.

Doug Quinn:

I think it was the fact that your insurance premiums doubled. And if you double the cost of a latte, starbucks franchises are gonna trip over themselves to come to Florida and open up a Starbucks franchise. That's just the way it goes. It has increased. They caught some of the state legislature. A state legislator was involved in opening an insurance company and he's sending emails out to other legislators saying hey, it's a really good environment now to come in and make profits on insurance. And, by the way, since that law went through, we've had several insurance companies just in the last month or two file for 50% rate increases.

George Siegal:

Yeah, it's insane what people are paying and I was complaining because I thought mine went up and was too expensive. But then I see other people that are paying way more than what we're paying and we're confident we have a company that actually would be on our side if push came to shove. I mean, we all hope that, but I just think them doing that is just I don't know how. I know how you hold them accountable. You vote them out, but from what I hear, the lobbying industry gives money to both sides, so the side in power just looks like the bad guys.

Doug Quinn:

Well, you know, again, I don't necessarily want to look at sides, because I think there's there's good and bad people on both sides, but I do think in Florida, much of the political leadership has taken a lot of money from the insurance industry and and look, there may be people who are voting for that, these bills, that think it's the right thing because they're getting pounded by. You know, this is wrong. This is what's happening. It's all this frivolous litigation and it's what we really see happening in Florida. Much of this is these small companies that are owned by hedge funds, private equity funds, anchored offshore, and they're hiring their own corporate affiliates to drain money out of the insurance company and show a loss, and then they're paying excessive I mean egregious executive compensation, ownership dividends. They're basically bankrupting these companies by draining all the assets out. Much of it looks very much like corporate embezzlement to me.

George Siegal:

Now, what do you think when you look at an area? We were back in Mexico Beach looking at how they've rebuilt that area. An expert we talked to there said people actually fought to have the standards lowered because they thought they were building it too high a code that was stopping people from coming in and developing. But they're building mostly wood houses on pylons that are elevated and we talked to some experts that said this is a disaster waiting to happen. When you see a place that's wiped out and they're not rebuilding to a standard that would survive, what wiped them out, what comes to your mind?

Doug Quinn:

I'll tell you, we were in Hurricane Michael helping out. We were in Mexico Beach and I'll tell you, it's not a disaster waiting to happen, it's a disaster that already happened because that beach was littered with stick, built houses on wooden pilings that were wiped out. You know, there's just little shreds of the house on top of wooden pilings. So you never, you know, rebuild in the same place that is suffering the same risk, with the same construction methods. I mean, when I rebuilt my house here, I built a 10 feet in the same place that is suffering the same risk, with the same construction methods. I mean, when I rebuilt my house here, I built a 10 feet in the air and I would not be able to live here if that wasn't the case. And we tell people you know, when we go into areas you've got to do something different. If you rebuild the same kind of property in the same kind of a risk zone, you're going to get the same results. You're playing roulette. And when you put your head on the pillow at night, you know it and you're not going to sleep. Well, you know.

Doug Quinn:

Again, we see a lot of people with anxiety issues. Even after a storm like that, when there's a heavy rainstorm, people start getting anxiety. We see that in communities. It's a community trauma that they're experiencing. So whereas the emotionally that comes out, but if you say intellectually, well, guess what? You know, my house is reinforced concrete, I built it up in the air for flood, I protect it against wind, I protect against fire if I'm in a fire zone to make sure, because if you're going to go back and live in the same place, there's nothing wrong with that within reason. But at the same time you better make sure you mitigate that you don't have to go through the same thing again. And I have very little sympathy for this system where we just keep rebuilding the same risky types of construction in the same risky areas and in the end you know it's the taxpayer who's going to come in later and bail people out.

George Siegal:

Well, yeah, and sadly we see that throughout Florida. That was. Another big issue in the film is there's a lot of areas in Fort Myers, in Pasco County, up in the Panhandle where they're building huge apartment complexes. There's one a mile from my house, a couple miles from my house, four buildings, wood frame, right on the bay. That are apartments and I've had people say, yeah, that could probably survive a category two, maybe a three, but if a bigger hurricane comes in or if there's a fire or anything really bad happens, it's going to get wiped out. And those are people that obviously aren't affording owning a house. They're renting. Everything they have is probably in that apartment.

Doug Quinn:

Right, and that's the idea that we, the way that we look at mitigation, it should be to the level of national defense, because it is national defense. You know we have to look at the threat to our population just from what's going on with. You know, if you're in an area with fire or flood, you have to make sure you build to whatever the existing peril is in your area. And we've got to stop sticking our heads in the sand, because I see this all the time. I constantly talk to people. We've never had a tornado here before. We've never had a flood here before. Our hurricane has never hit this area has never burned before. I hear that from people all year long in different cat zones, just like my experience. This property has never flooded since 1957. Well, guess what? That doesn't count anymore. All that, it's a different game and you have to say here's the legitimate risk and I better make sure that I protect my property and my family from that risk.

George Siegal:

Well, one of the arguments I hear against that is and Hank Oving, who was in my last film, the Last House Standing. He was big at helping redesign some things in New Jersey after Sandy. He said how much can you really bunker your entire community, help you get your feet on the ground quicker, but for every person to build a concrete block house that could withstand a category five he didn't necessarily think was realistic. Would you say, if you can't do that, you just shouldn't live there.

Doug Quinn:

Yes, absolutely. If you cannot protect yourself and your family from the peril, then you should not live in a perilous area. Now here's the challenge when do you go? That has no peril whatsoever. That has no, you know local. There's some kind of a risk. In many places, or places like this, where we had a fairly stable environment, we didn't have significant risk, you know. So where do you draw the line? You draw the line at what's reasonable and what is a basic scenario, Like there's got to be some community mitigation. That goes on. There's got to be some.

Doug Quinn:

You know, after Sandy there was all this talk. We had had a big storm on Nor'easter in, I think, 1993, the early 90s, and they said, all right, here's what we're going to do. There's all these proactive things after a loss, a disaster, we're going to redline on places that shouldn't be built. If you have a house there, that's fine, but you're done building there. If that house gets wiped out in a storm, that's it. It's going to be blue acres. There'll be no more building on that the next time around. We're not going to insure you, we're not going to bail you out with public money. You go elsewhere. And of course that never happened. After a year you never heard another word. After Sandy, there was going to be a seawall from one end of the state to the other. That never happened.

George Siegal:

Yeah, I mean there's always a lot of talk. I think people just take the risk. There's a lot of houses in my neighborhood that are two or three feet elevation when the storm elevation is 11 feet here. That's the flood elevation. It's crazy to me that people take those risks and I see some people just remodeling those homes. They're not elevating them. I know that's very expensive to do, but I think it's just the gamble that people take because they don't think it's really going to happen.

Doug Quinn:

And now you are talking, you're using the word gamble appropriately, because that's exactly it, look.

George Siegal:

I knew I could work that in positively somewhere.

Doug Quinn:

You feel better, you feel vindicated.

George Siegal:

I do. Thank you, did you win? Okay, I won.

Doug Quinn:

My house here. I only had to raise five feet, I raised a 10. And what's the situation with that is, you know, we call our house the Stairmaster. You know, careful as possible and as prudent as possible, we made sure we had hurricane straps. I make sure that I have. My windows are rated for certain level of wind and there's a sweet spot there where it becomes, you know, because certain things like if you're a direct hit by a tornado, you're a direct hit by a fire, You're a direct hit by a hurricane.

Doug Quinn:

You know many structures are not going to survive, but we see a lot of structures that are outside of the actual cone of disaster but are impacted and they could have avoided that. You know, in fires you could just have had some degree, a 30-foot defensible space. You could have, you know, plants that are not, that are fire resistant for your landscaping. You could have covering over the openings into that house so that embers don't get in. You could have a fire rated roof and something like that could be the difference of your house burning to the ground and having nothing, or your house surviving a fire and not having a problem. And it's similar with wind and flood events. You know, am I pretty comfortable being 10 feet in the air if there's a flood? Yes, I am. But my community, to speak to your question, has to also pitch in, because what good does it help me if my house is above the flood but my whole neighborhood is underwater? I can't even get to my house.

George Siegal:

Yeah, that's definitely true. So tell us about the United Survivors Disaster Relief, the group that you were part of.

Doug Quinn:

We're a look. It's a volunteer only, nonprofit. We just say it's a very, very expensive hobby. Nobody gets paid. We just all volunteer.

Doug Quinn:

And it was started by storm victims after Sandy because people had shown us so much kindness. Afterwards, you know, people had kids from Mormons from Utah come and help me, you know, clean up my house. I had people from college, students from Appalachian State University in North Carolina, come help. We had people send donations of food and clothing and you know we really didn't think anybody liked New Jersey and clothing and you know we really didn't think anybody liked New Jersey. It was very touching and it had a big mental effect, an emotional effect. It is good to get the love of the nation because you tend to suffer in silos. You're all alone. Even though my neighbor might have went through the same thing, here, I am all alone, buried in this. So to have people from the outside show you that kindness meant so much.

Doug Quinn:

And when it came to, probably about five years after the storm, many of us weren't even home yet. I certainly wasn't. But we saw Hurricane Harvey decimate Houston and Texas and we were like we have to do something. I mean we just, you know, we put a post on Facebook. We threw a bunch of stuff donations into our private vehicles. We drove 27 hours down to Houston and a couple of things Number one, it was very important for us to pay forward and number two, we found it to be very therapeutic. It was disturbing, you know, walking, driving into the neighborhood and everyone's possessions were pushed out on the front for the garbage to come. I remember that day. That was very hard to watch Everything I own gets thrown out of the front yard and carted away. But it was also therapeutic to be able to take what we had learned and help people out in their darkest moment. And it just sort of blossomed from there. We didn't have a name at first, you know, we didn't have any kind of tax status. We just threw stuff in our vans and drove to disasters. And then it became.

Doug Quinn:

Well, you know, I had one of my financial planning clients give us a large donation. I wanted her to get a tax deduction, so we formed as a 501c3. And then they were seeing the pieces. You know, not just the supplies that they need, but they need degrees. Like what did we need? You know, I needed some education on disaster trauma and where I could seek help and even acknowledging that it exists.

Doug Quinn:

You know we also needed somebody who had lived through it to give us a hug and say it's going to be OK. You know you can get through this, because that's sometimes the most important things we do. We're just in there giving people a hug and say I've been through it, I've survived it. You will too. We can give you some tips on how to do that. You know, we've actually wrote a document called Eight Tips for Coping and Thriving Through Crisis. That was just based on our experience from coming through all this, and that kind of peer-to-peer survivor-to-survivor therapeutic connection is so important. So then we added that to it.

Doug Quinn:

And then we found out, you know, it was really important for us to do community organizing because if you, you know, the tendency is not to bring stakeholders to the table, there's a lot of money on the table. There's a lot of money on the table. There's a lot of insurance money and federal money, and the people who wind up getting involved and profiting handsomely off it are the politically connected people from your state capital, and they're the ones that actually will plan your recovery. And do they necessarily have your best interest at heart? Maybe not. So we're big on pushing people to do community organizing and make sure that survivors are brought to the table when we plan the rebuilding of our communities.

Doug Quinn:

One of the sayings we have is you know, no decisions about us without us.

Doug Quinn:

And the other thing we say is, if you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu, and we understand that.

Doug Quinn:

So that, so you know again, there's another piece that we're doing. We found out there's a lot of like us people that in the midst of their darkest moment, lift their face out of the mud and say, how can I help my neighbor, how can I help my community? And we isolate who those people are and then we will fund them. We set them up with a non-profit accountant here in new jersey and we allow them to form an organization that is a 501c3 organization and they can now raise money tax deductible, meaning people who donate to them can deduct it off their taxes. And it's sort of a teach a person to fish kind of a thing where now those organizations who will be effective? If you give one of those small organizations of survivors in the cat zone itself a dollar, they will stretch it like $10. So you know, we look to again. It was a thing that we had learned how important it was, and then we carry that forward into other disaster zones and get that experience out to people.

George Siegal:

Yeah, I mean. Disasters always bring out two things the best of people you see the heroes, the people that come to everybody's aid and it also brings out the worst of people. That then see innocent people that are damaged and then try to prey on them. So it's great to be giving them a lifeline like this. Tell me about the American Policyholder Association and what you do with that.

Doug Quinn:

The APA was formed because of the fraud that we saw happen in Superstorm Sandy. What we saw in Sandy was the insurance companies were hiring engineering companies and you know some of them did a fine job and some of them we caught them changing reports where you know it said an engineer on the ground was like this the house was damaged by storm forces and the engineering firm would now just add the word not this house was not damaged. So we caught them side by side creating fraudulent reports. What we did different in Sandy 2,000 of us had sued the insurance companies laughed at us because there were 144,000 people, you know claims, households that were impacted, 2,000 people suing big deal. But what we did different in Sandy is we had the New York Attorney General raid an engineering firm and seize all their files and they went back several weeks later and walked one of their executives out in handcuffs and that one criminal arrest changed everything, because and that one criminal arrest changed everything because, you know, we were able to get the federal government to open up 144,000 claims. We were able to get $350 million paid out to people who had been cheated on their claims and that was a deterrent, you know. We know that there's a lot of people. Like I said, many people in the insurance industry are doing a great job. They're there to help you. They take pride in helping you. It means a lot to them. But there are some people not so and basically you know they're shaving 70, 80, 90 percent off our claims and Florida is now investigating it. We are hoping that they give a fair chance to consumers and make arrests in this, just like they would have somebody stealing from the insurance company. We're hoping that they're fair about it. But basically, what happens if they say, well, if I make this change big deal, my company gets sued, I'm protected behind the corporate veil, they've got lawyers for all that, no big deal. But if we change that calculation to say, if I change this report and I cheat an American family out of their most valuable asset, their home, I could get walked out of here in handcuffs tomorrow. That is a deterrent to crime. So that's what we're pushing for and of course it requires the cooperation of law enforcement.

Doug Quinn:

But we are the first ever what's called an SIU Special Investigation Unit. Every insurance company has one that if the people because people do commit fraud against insurance companies regularly, so they have. These SIUs are basically like a detective bureau. If somebody sees red flags, they send it to the SIU. The SIU investigates it. If they find out that, yes, somebody's cheating the insurance company, they'll send it to prosecutors. And now we are the only organization in the country that does it the other way around If it looks like somebody on the insurer side is cheating a consumer, they turn the case over to us and then we will our investigators. We have an SIU of long-term 20, 30-year investigators, detectives run by a former prosecutor who will look at it, and if it looks like fraud was committed or it should at least be investigated, we turn it over to public prosecutors.

Doug Quinn:

Here's the thing the consumer should win every time.

Doug Quinn:

The consumer is who pays for this?

Doug Quinn:

The consumer who pays the insurance premiums that fund all the TV commercials. You see all of the political lobbying that goes around to protect the insurance company. The consumer pays that with their premiums. The taxes that fund the public prosecutors are paid by taxpayers and consumers, and in the end, all of this should be done to help the consumer, who's at the most vulnerable point in their life, having just suffered a significant loss, and everybody needs to put their own self-interest aside and come forward. So you know, for me to be happy, that would have to be like 99% of the time, not like every once in a while we get a victory. The reality is, if you're paying your premiums, and that's funding that insurance company's SIU, and you're paying your taxes, and that's funding your public prosecutor, shouldn't at least 50% of the efforts go to protecting you and your family from being defrauded on your insurance policy by either the insurance company employees or the vendors that they hire? Shouldn't you get at least half of that money to protect you, not just the insurance company?

George Siegal:

Yeah, you would think, but it almost makes too much sense. I mean you would. I don't know how people sleep at night, taking advantage of people when they're at their most vulnerable. I don't know how you could just reject that claim. I don't know how you leave people hanging like that. I mean it takes you experience it more than me. How do these people sleep at night?

Doug Quinn:

Justification is a big part of it, and they're also trained. They're trained to fit within a system. So and it's certain choke points at the system where the fraud is occurring, it might not necessarily be the insurance company claims department, it might be the third party administrator they hired, it might be the engineering firm they hired, or it might be the claims department manager. That is it. But everyone else is doing a bang up job. But there's little choke points and there's a system that's come in. A lot of it is being done automatically with AI. But there is something, there's a theory in criminology. There's a lot of theories in criminology that say why does somebody like you and I, who went to the same school, who learned the same values of right and wrong, who went to the same church, we know right and wrong, what makes somebody go to work and commit fraud like this, and how do they sleep with themselves?

Doug Quinn:

And one of the theories is something called the triangle of fraud and explains why people go into the workplace and commit fraud. And it is basically it starts with like an unshareable financial burden. I need this job. If they say we're losing money and there's layoffs, you know no-transcript, you're a good guy they find a way to justify. Well, consumers steal from people anyway. Well, it's just a couple of dollars, it's no big deal. Well, you know, maybe you know this isn't legitimate damage. There's always a justification factor and that's called the triangle of fraud and, like I say, there's systems at play here that most people don't understand. Me, after being a financial advisor in the insurance industry for 30 years, had no idea of what really goes on behind the scenes, and most people, even people that have worked in the insurance industry their whole adult lives, their whole careers, really don't understand a lot of this.

George Siegal:

Much less to consume. Let's leave people with something here that let's give consumers or homeowners or renters an action item. What's the number one thing everybody should be thinking about when they buy, rent or live in some place that could potentially experience a disaster?

Doug Quinn:

Proactive mitigation, avoid the loss up front. It is so much easier to spend a couple of extra dollars to protect your property and your family than it is to come in and go through all this mess and fighting the insurance companies and cleaning it up and losing all of your stuff. I mean, it's just so much. There's a study from I think the Wharton School did it for FEMA and it basically says for every dollar spent on mitigation, you save $6 on cleanup on the back end. And it's not just a financial calculation.

Doug Quinn:

I can't begin to tell you the emotional trauma and the heartache that myself, my family and my neighbors all went through. And listen, maybe it would have been $20,000 to raise my house before the storm. And if you talked to me before the storm I would have been like you're crazy, I don't have that money, I can't do it. It's too much. If you tell me now and you give me a time machine and I can go back and spend $100,000 to raise that house, I wouldn't think twice about it. I'd sell a kidney to do it to avoid what I went through for seven years. Mitigation is number one. It is your personal responsibility. Don't wait till it's a requirement. Don't wait till somebody talks you into it. Spend a couple of extra bucks and protect your property and your family upfront and don't go through the mess. Don't have to fight the insurance company. Don't have to replace everything you own.

George Siegal:

Yeah, when I was trying to raise money for different projects and I would go to the concrete industry or any of these people that advocate safety and safe building, I would say you need to lay out the cost of not doing it that way. People complain it's too expensive. Show them the other number, show them the number of this is what happens if you put up that stick frame house on the second floor right by the water, versus just spending a little more and doing it the right way. I think that you're right. That's what it's going to take to wake people up.

Doug Quinn:

Yeah, and they don't look. We can't make people believers storm by storm. There's got to be an emphasis in the media, in government, in just day-to-day conversation. And unfortunately, you know we're relying well, I don't want to say unfortunately, because you know we're relying on, maybe the townships and the code enforcers and the state code people to make the change and we're also relying on the construction industry to play along. But I'll tell you what I mean you could make me a salesman for any construction product on earth and I'll be a billionaire because I can look you in the eye and tell you this needs to be done. Spend the extra money I can upsell all day long because it is the right thing, and not for something that looks prettier, but something that protects your property and your family and your possessions.

George Siegal:

Yeah Well, hey, doug, thank you so much for coming on today. I know I've been bugging you for a while. I appreciate you taking the time and I think people are going to love seeing you in Built to Last Buyer Beware, because you said a lot of important things. Really appreciate what you do.

Doug Quinn:

Thank you for getting the message out. We appreciate it.

George Siegal:

If you have a story about your house, good or bad, I'd like to hear from you. There's a contact form in the show notes. Fill it out, send it my way and you might be a guest on an upcoming episode. Also, check out the link in. Thanks for taking the time to listen today. I'll see you next time.

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