Up to four inches of rain that fell week before last may have sizzled away in the pre-summer heat wave, but old oaks and homes smashed by 70 mile-per-hour winds and hail damage have been a lingering disaster.

“In my 18 years as an agent, this is the biggest event we have had as far as the number of claims and the amount of damage,” said Jeff Hopf, local State Farm agent. “The company has a way they categorize storms for teams that travel all over. We got a ‘Catastrophe Team.’”

“It was like everybody in town wrecked their cars at once,” said Wayne Tribble, who operates T Paint and Body and Courtesy Car Rental with his wife, Kay. “I haven’t seen anything like it in six years of business.”

All three of his own cars were damaged, but Tribble said you could see the difference from one side of town to the other just by comparing the number of casualties from Ratliff Ford on the south side of town to hard-hit Ratliff Chevrolet on the south side.

The majority of estimates Tribble has turned out have ranged from $2,000 to $8,000 and he prides himself in working well with adjustors to bring special problems to their attention without extra work for his customers.

“I like to do work myself because I know I can stand behind it, but it depends on the kind of damage you have” said Tribble. “Some insurance companies write up PDR (paintless dent repair) so we have a Dent Doctor team here.

“I searched through a dozen (PDR) people to find this company with a good warranty people can count on.”

Dent Doctor and Hail Pro are two companies that have built a statewide reputation, but when no business with a warranty for local PDR service operates in a hometown, some agents prefer conventional repair.

The local Farm Bureau office leans toward it.

“In the past we had some people get PDR done,” said Farm Bureau agent Devon Everett. “If they had problems with their paint, the insurance company couldn’t help them.”

Everett said Friday that his adjustors had seen about 125 vehicles averaging about $3,500 in conventional repair estimates. The biggest claim was around $7,300.

“It was mostly hail, but a few shopping cart dents, too,” he said.

He said about 100 homeowner claims had been filed also.

“Almost every composition roof I looked at had to be repaired or replaced,” he said. “They probably averaged $3,500 to $4,000.

The worst was a house at Sandy Harbor. The metal roof pealed right off and it rained inside the house. It could run $50,000 to $60,000.

Hopf estimated the State Farm Catastrophe Team had seen as many as 150 home claims, more than 250 individual auto claims, and he is still counting. “The damage was minor to the totaling of brand new cars,” he said. “We saw cars totaled with as little as 800 miles on them.”

“We saw quite a bit of wind damage,” he said. “One the storm team says that the one thing predictable is that the damage is unpredictable.”

Just as in a tornado scene where one house sits alone undamaged in a wrecked neighborhood, this storm left some houses unscathed while neighbors across the street had heavy damage, Hopf said.

“One thing about it,” he added. “Our agents go all over the country and they said Llano was unique. The people here are the most cooperative, timely in their appointments and polite of anyplace they have been.”