Leading The Way Home: 29-Hour Home Rebuild Marks Second Anniversary of Superstorm Sandy

KEANSBURG, N.J., Oct. 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The upcoming holiday season presents a series of challenges for thousands of families who are still displaced by Superstorm Sandy. Although two years have passed, many homes are still uninhabitable, and many families continue to move from place to place, often separating their families, just to have a place to sleep.

Beginning today and continuing for 29 straight hours into tomorrow afternoon, Farmers Insurance and the St. Bernard Project (SBP) will be leading the way home for one more family in Keansburg, N.J. The team will work on the home of Hilton Dantas, completing nearly a weeks' worth of work in only 29 hours. Dantas' home is the 9^th home Farmers volunteers have helped complete and the 9th done by SBP in the area.

Since the company's founding 86 years ago, Farmers Insurance has been dedicated to helping the communities in which its employees and agents live and work.  It also believes that helping lead the way back home for families involves three essential elements:  Preparedness, Response and Recovery.  

At its core, Farmers is an organization that believes in smart. It is why the insurer has some of the best trained agents and employees in the industry and why it invests in being prepared as an organization, to deliver for its customers when they are most in need. 

Farmers is also keenly aware that a swift response to a catastrophe will help assure a speedy recovery.  That's why it has teams dedicated to responding quickly and effectively when a disaster occurs.  Its call centers can quickly add staff to ensure customers do not suffer long waits on the phone, while the Mobile Claims Centers are able to quickly establish a front-line presence in areas hit with destruction, providing anyone in the community, customers and non-customers alike, with immediate relief.

And when it comes to recovery, Farmers has always worked one-on-one with customers to ensure families can return home quickly.  Farmers also understands that in addition to individual family recovery, it is important for the community as a whole to recover from a disaster.  That is one reason the Farmers Cares program was developed, to provide assistance to affected communities and to dedicate volunteers and other resources to affect positive change in neighborhoods devastated by natural disasters.

Since May 2013, Farmers Insurance, through its Farmers Cares community program, has been a partner with the St. Bernard Project (SBP) to help families and communities impacted by disasters.  Beginning in Joplin, Mo. in 2013, Farmers and local SBP affiliate, Rebuild Joplin, have partnered to help the town recover from the devastating EF5 tornado that struck the area.  Over the past 17 months, Farmers has provided more than 450 employee and agent volunteers, who have completed more than 16,000 volunteer hours to help rebuild nearly 50 homes.  Additionally, confident that they had garnered some key insights and experience about disaster recovery, Farmers and SBP collaborated to develop the first-of-its-kind Disaster Recovery Playbook which provides key tips and a proven road map that communities can use to recover at an accelerated pace after a local disaster.

Seeing a need in New Jersey and eager to share its local employee and agent talent, its experience in disaster recovery and implementing the insights of the Disaster Recovery Playbook, Farmers again chose to team up with another SBP affiliate, St. Bernard Project New Jersey, earlier this year to help rebuild homes that remain damaged from Superstorm Sandy.  Over the course of the past several months, Farmers volunteers have already helped rebuild more than 100 homes in the Sea Bright area, helping lead the way home for dozens of families in New Jersey.

"Farmers Insurance has a proud heritage of helping families get back home after suffering an unexpected event.  By taking care of customers after they've suffered a loss and helping them put their lives back together, Farmers continues to play a leadership role in helping families and communities recover from devastating events," said Carl Hackling, Head of Exclusive Agent Distribution, East Zone for Farmers Insurance.  "Our work here in New Jersey, in partnership with the St. Bernard Project team, is a continuation of our commitment to the families and communities who need our help."

Farmers believes it has the unique combination of talented people, first-hand experience, technical expertise and a real-world tested recovery playbook to provide the insight and leadership needed to assist communities hard-hit by disasters.

Its work in Joplin, and now in New Jersey, is a clear demonstration of its willingness and ability to help communities ready and willing to recover quickly and effectively following a devastating event.

About Farmers Insurance
Farmers Insurance Group of Companies is a leading U.S. insurer group of automobiles, homes and small businesses and also provides a wide range of other insurance and financial services products. Farmers Insurance is proud to serve more than 10 million households with more than 20 million individual policies across all 50 states through the efforts of over 50,000 exclusive and independent agents and approximately 22,000 employees.

For more information about Farmers, visit its Web site at www.farmers.com or at www.Facebook.com/FarmersInsurance.

Contact:

Carrie Bonney
913-462-5041
Carrie.bonney@farmersinsurance.com

Trevor Chapman
323-327-1896
Trevor.chapman@farmersinsurance.com

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SOURCE Farmers Insurance