Legionnaires’ Disease Panel Discussion February 10, 2023 at 2 pm Southwest Pool & Spa Show, Houston, Texas

Industry experts share knowledge — what you need to know to safeguard your pools

Service Industry News is hosting a free panel discussion on Legionnaires’ Disease during the Southwest Pool and Spa Show, in Houston, Texas, from February 8 to 11, 2023. The discussion, which will include manufacturers, chemists, service techs, and insurance agents, will be held on Friday, February 10, from 2 to 4 p.m., and everyone is welcome.

Every year, numerous Legionnaires’ Disease outbreaks take place, and one of the more likely culprits is a poorly maintained hot tub or spa. The discussion will focus on what you, as a service tech, can do to prevent these often-deadly outbreaks.

From a service professional’s perspective, preventing Legionnaires’ Disease outbreaks from occurring at the spas that you service is crucial because not only is Legionnaires’ a public health threat, but an outbreak associated with a commercially serviced pool or spa can destroy your business.

The liability is huge, and depending on how your business is structured, if your service company is blamed for a deadly Legionnaires’ outbreak, everything you’ve ever worked for could be at risk.

Ray Arouesty, Senior Vice

Join Service Industry News and host to industry experts in a panel discussion on Legionnaires’ Disease. The panel members include Alicia Stephens of Applied Bio; Rudy Stankowitz of Aquatic Facility Training & Consultants; Steve Berens of Clear Comfort; Terry Arko of Hasa Inc., Raymond Arouesty of HUB International Insurance; Ben Stobnicki, City of Mt. Pleasant Health Dept.; Kenneth Gregory of Pentair. President at the insurance firm, HUB International, says he’s handled Legionnaires’ claims over the past few years, and they’ve all been pretty consequential.

The last outbreak involved 18 people, some of whom were seriously ill. After re-evaluating the risk involved, he decided to stop covering Legionnaires’. At that time, his HUB insurance program was one of the few insurance companies that did cover Legionnaires’.

Arouesty says that Legionnaires’ is basically uninsurable. He explains that there are three components associated with uninsurable risks. First, the risk is ever-present. Second, it affects a large number of people. And third, if that isn’t bad enough, there are large monetary damages associated with the losses.

Legionnaires’ Disease has all of these components, and consequently, nobody wants to insure it. With other uninsurable risks, such as fires, earthquakes, and floods, government intervention comes in to provide economic security.

“But with Legionnaires’, there is no white knight, riding in on a steed to help back up insurance companies,” Arouesty said.

For the service professional, Arouesty says there is a kind of dichotomy to the problem of preventing Legionnaires’ outbreaks. On the one hand, it’s an easy problem to deal with. Proper sanitation — and investing in a secondary sanitation method if the primary sanitation method fails — should be adequate to protect the public as well as protect service pros from liability.

“That’s hopeful,” Arouesty said. “On the other hand, it can be really difficult to prevent Legionnaires’ unless you have a customer on board willing to invest in the equipment that can help prevent it. And oftentimes, they are not.”

So even if service professionals are educated on the true risks associated with Legionnaires’ Disease, it’s also necessary to educate your customers as to their true economic risks.

“Once they recognize this, they will probably be willing to spend a couple of thousand dollars to fix the problem,” Arouesty said.

Join the Service Industry News panel discussion on Legionnaires’ Disease.Learn what it is, how prevalent it is, what your risks are, how to prevent it, and how to structure your company so that an outbreak doesn’t result in financial ruin.

The panel will include Terry Arko, Product Training and Content Manager at Hasa Pool Inc.; Ray Arouesty, Senior Vice President at HUB International; Steve Berens, CEO & Founder of Clear Comfort, Kenneth Gregory, Manager of Compliance and Safety at Pentair Inc.; Rudy Stankowitz, CEO & Vice President Aquatic Facility Training and Consultants; Alicia Stephens, Branding and Education Manager at Biolab Inc.; and Ben Stobnicki, Environmental Health Inspector for the City of Longview, Texas.