And you're right. He looked to be out of central casting for sleaze.
That mustache, and I couldn't believe the cheap suit he was wearing. It was that bad.
The other thing I remember from the book was that something like *2* people in the area had bought flood insurance at the time of the hurricane.
Hazleton didn't have much of a problem with Agnes, only flooded basements and stuff because it's at 2000 feet but Wilkes-Barre did. My church volunteered in Wilkes-Barre after the flood hauling surplus food and supplies like toilet paper in to town, I was 13 then so I loaded and unloaded trucks. My cousin who was older spent days on a boat rounding up floating coffins and such.
A funny story: A couple of neer-do-wells we knew of decided that they could steal beer from the docks at the Stegmaier Brewery, they grabbed a few cases, put them in their pick-up and got arrested on the way out. The funny thing was they stole nothing but drinking water in beer cans. The brewery switched to bottling water after the flood because they had an uncontaminated water supply.