Residents making many insurance claims on property damage due to the storm

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - Hartman Roofing has been doing a lot of roof inspections and temporary repairs for people that have leaks from the past storm this weekend.

“The roofing is probably the majority of the damage, but since the storm was, the hail was so wind driven, we have seen a lot of damaged windows and siding and gutters,” said Jay Hedrick, owner of Hartman Roofing.

Many insurance claims were made over the weekend as the hail damaged houses and cars.

“So really the storm that impacted the panhandle continued all the way East through the Dallas-Fort Worth area and we’ve already heard from hundreds of customers reporting damage. Both to their homes and their cars,” said Chris Pilcic, spokesperson for State Farm Insurance.

Most of the damage on the houses that Hartman roofing is seeing, are damages from hail and wind as opposed to tree damage.

“Right now if someone has a problem obviously we want to get it at least what we would refer to as temp-in or people dried in. And then from that point they have to file an insurance claim to make sure that the insurance company agrees with the damages and then we proceed from there with the full replacement,” said Hedrick.

This time of year, it is not as typical to see these types of storms therefore, The roofing company has been receiving an increased amount of calls since the storm hit.

“It’s a little bit later in the year obviously. I mean usually we get our storms in, you know, April, May and June, times like that. so, it’s a little bit later in the year for it to happen. But, there have been some much larger storms in the past that hit different areas of town but the river road and rolling hills, this is probably the biggest storm that they’ve had out there in quite some time,” said Hedrick.

“Texas routinely leads the country in hail losses. I don’t have the numbers in front of me right now but State Farm last year, Texas lead the number of claims that we had for homeowners and auto claims,” said Pilcic.

According to the insurance company, the hail was so severe that it visibly damaged a lot of vehicles and homes. When it comes to homes, people are claiming broken windows and skylights as well as roof damage.

“For homes, were hearing a lot about, like broken skylights. One of the challenges there is if you don’t make temporary repairs and it should rain again, you could sustain additional damage,” said Pilcic.

State Farm expects their numbers to keep rising from this past storm.

“When there’s not an immediate need, sometimes folks wait until it’s convenient to file those claims. So, we continue, those we expect those numbers to continue to go up,” said Pilcic.

Hartman roofing is seeing most of their need in areas like River Road, Pleasant Valley, and Rolling Hills as that is where a lot of the hail did the damage.

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