The Independent Insurance Claim Adjuster Resource

Monday, December 27th, 2010

There aren’t too many other things that go hand in hand so well as blizzards and insurance claims, except for maybe holiday food and weight gain. Today marked the pinnacle for one of the worst winter storms in the Eastern United States.  The storm has left tens of thousands stranded in vehicles and subways alike from the Carolinas up to Maine, causing the bulk of problems in New York City where there isn’t much of a place to put the 16 some odd inches of heavy white frozen precipitation.  It was recently reported that the Big Apple’s 5 boroughs are entrenched in a backlog of over 1,200 emergency calls caused by the immobility of police, fire and emergency worker personnel.  We could ramble on for pages about the length of the storm and the problems it has caused, but we’re here to ramble about insurance claims related to these storms.

A quick listen and look at the NYC police and fire radio frequency scanners hosted by the great folks at Radio Reference, will find that NYC fire and police are undoubtedly a busy group – of course, we had a feeling that was already the case.  The radio transmissions haven’t slowed down for weather.

When people think about blizzards it should be no surprise the most common type of insurance claim is automobile related.  Taking a moment to realize the extended depths of personal injuries and civil liability though brings us to produce this list of common insurance claims related to blizzards:

• Delay & Canceled Travel Insurance Claims – caused by canceled flights due to weather
• Vehicle Immobility (Towing) Insurance Claims – caused by vehicles stuck in roadside snow drifts and slick areas
• Health Insurance Claims – related to persons injured by their own fault
• Premises Liability Claims – although they aren’t too common Read more…

The Boulder County Sheriff’s Department has released the following list of structures and residences damaged by the Four Mile Canyon Fire.  This a list of wild fire damaged homes, homes that were burned or totaled, or damaged by the fire near Boulder Colorado.  The homes are sorted by address If you are an insurance carrier looking for a professional independent fire adjusting company to handle your loss in or near Boulder, CO please consider our sponsor, Peak Claims, Inc.:

The list was last compiled at 11AM on Thursday, September 9th, 2010:
Destroyed homes or other structures
Read more…

by Phillip Crimaldi – Editor & Insurance Claim Analyst – May 19th, 2010

On any given day my office is prepared to remind inland residential property owners how much worse their $5,000 claim for water damage could have been.  While we are sympathetic to the average homeowners property claim, one mention of Hurricane Katrina will usually save us several minutes of ranting from the common property owner.  I always tell them “it could have been much worse”.

It is easy to remind these these folks about how much worse it could have been because I was there in Slidell, Marrero, Chalmette and dozens of other cities and towns for the months following Hurricane Katrina.  Witnessing the interiors of people’s homes and lives is an image that will be permanently etched in my mind forever.

That’s exactly why I think this oil spill poses a serious threat to all property owners along the Gulf Coast.


If you’re not following my thoughts just yet, let me drop this one on you:

“Wind Driven Oil”

Just in case you’re out of the loop, dozens of insurers had Civil and Regulatory Complaints filed against them for failing to recognize that some interior water damage was caused by rain;  we’ll have to spare you the details of these cases for another post.

Wind driven oil might become a reality for insurers, property owners and every living thing on the Gulf Coast line.

We’re not talking about requiring the heartless destruction that Mother Nature rained down on the Gulf in late summer of 2005, but rather only needing ~70 mph gusts to drive that oil right off the coast line and up into the air.  How far it travels likely depends on how fast the wind is moving and several other factors, but one thing is for sure; if cinder-block buildings couldn’t stand the wind, neither will the oil.  It’s true that we’re here attempting to calculate the potential risk to property late on a Wednesday night, but what about the rest of the Gulf?  We’ll just have to leave that up to the scientists and engineers, but if our calculations are correct it could be devastating to vegetation, nature and property.



While the news headlines, scientists, meteorologists and everyone else is talking about how hurricane season might carry the oil around the Gulf, it seems almost foolish to doubt that mother nature couldn’t put an unpredictable amount of that oil on land.  Even if Hurricane season doesn’t make a full on strike against the Gulf. I’m willing to bet insurers will have a hard time denying the window cleaning bill, at minimum. Leave a comment!

Phillip Crimaldi is associated with  Peak Claims, Inc. -  A Denver, Colorado based cargo damage surveying and claim services company.

An unbelievably destructive and sobering force of nature caused by an 8.8 magnitude (Richter Scale) earthquake occurred this Saturday morning in South Central Chile near the city of Concepción in Region VIII.  This is the largest quake to strike since 1990 when a 9.1 magnitude quake off the Northern Coast of Sumatra rattled in 2004, killing 227,898 people.

Insurance claim damages are already estimated in excess of $2 billion dollars indicating another hard hit to the world’s largest property and casualty insurers.  It is believed this quake will top Haiti’s losses due to the higher cost of construction and real estate in Chile.  Losses have already been considered catastrophic for some property & casualty insurers this year.
Read more…