Katrina Billboard Blasts Big Insurance in its Own Back Yard

The battle for hearts and minds in the hometown of State Farm Insurance is escalating. The Scruggs Katrina Group, attorneys who won the legendary lawsuit, have ensured that State Farm CEO Ed Rust will at some point drive past its rotating sign along Veterans Highway in Bloomington, Illinois.

Today's sign was "21 Months in a FEMA Trailer. Thanks Neighbor," with a photo of one of the many trailers still along the Gulf Coast.

Maybe the signs will help open a dialogue in here. My husband's mother was offered a $20,000 settlement on the home her late husband built. His sister still lives in a FEMA trailer. There are thousands of stories like theirs and yes, I do see eyes glaze over at the subject here on the prairie.

You can't force empathy, but you can put up a billboard. We passed it on the way to the $7.5 million State Farm Waterpark for employees only. Internals, not externals -- the company apparently has an employee distinction that either gets you into the giant water park or leaves you on the other side of the barbed wire fence.

Photographing the facility at all involves stopping in traffic and running up a hill, which thankfully my husband volunteered to do.

Contractors worked on the park all summer in what looked like a biodome, and it has been unveiled under much secrecy based on terse replies in the local paper.

The readers' comments to any State Farm coverage are telling. It's hard to distinguish if some are ghost-written by SF Corporate, as the Scruggs Katrina Group suggests is happening in many Gulf Coast newspapers. I agree that a Jackson resident probably didn't really write this apology:

"I no longer feel the folks on the Coast have been violated and taken advantage of by State Farm. They were informed about flood insurance and whether they were covered or not was a choice they made. You don't hear about the house fire where two State Farm agents show up with a check in hand for the victims before the firefighters have departed the scene. Or about how many State Farm agents were dispatched to the Coast in the immediate wake of Katrina to aid and assist the hapless victims."

We rarely refer to ourselves as hapless victims. And as far as the Bloomington readers' comments, I can only hope these comments aren't from actual sentient beings:

"If you read anything about Katrina, you will find that there were no winds strong enough to destroy a home ... "

"That most of the reasons that people are still living in trailers is due to the fact that man power and materials are very limited down there."

And more succinctly,

"The idiots that didn't buy flood insurance and lived near a coastline got what was coming to them. "

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now investigating insurance company activities post-Katrina. State Farm is not a public company and doesn't have to disclose whether it is being investigated, but posters who say they're employees have been chatting online about it. I need to take a break from the local message boards for my mental health, but it's a hell of a window into a company town. And once in awhile there are words of support like this from Keoki88.

"People in New Orleans are going nutso because their whole life has been decimated. Meanwhile, in the media in B/N, there are all these stories saying things like 'Ed Rust gets 9 mil bonus' and 'statefarm builds 7.5 mil waterpark' and 'statefarm policyholders get to split billion dollar dividends'. Could that have been better spent in New Orleans improving your company reputation? "

Keoki88 - call me! Having evacuated to the home of an embattled insurance company feels like landing in the middle of Michael Moore's Roger and Me when he followed the CEO of G.M. I moved here because there was no option to move home to New Orleans, and stayed because my father was dying. Sometimes it's helpful to focus on all of the Bloomington Lincoln lore, but he's dead too.

If I ever get to sit down with the State Farm CEO, probably on some fantastic furniture based on this year's bonus, I would ask him, "Can't you read the signs?

 

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