THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 13, 1996 TAG: 9609130599
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: DOW JONES NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: 38 lines
Hurricane Fran caused an estimated $1.6 billion damage to insured property, an insurance trade group said Thursday.
The estimate far surpasses the preliminary estimate of $625 million released by Property Claim Services last week.
The group, a division of American Insurance Services Group Inc., said it estimates the insurance industry will receive about 500,000 claims from Fran, which produced damaging winds, tornadoes, and flooding.
The figure is based on reports of claim activity from North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
PCS estimated it would receive about 350,000 claims from North Carolina alone concerning damage to homes, farm properties, commercial buildings, vehicles and boats.
Five days after Fran struck, 350,000 people were still without power in North Carolina, and it may be a week before everybody is back on line. Tens of thousands still could not use their phones. Thousands were without water, since many homes have wells with electric pumps. And huge numbers of downed trees still lay across roads.
Sean Mooney, an economist with the Insurance Information Institute, another trade group, said the earlier figure was based on a computer model that assumed Fran had kept to the path of a normal coastal hurricane. As a result, the model didn't catch the damage to inland areas.
``We had lower winds spread over a wider land mass than we normally get in a hurricane,'' Mooney said.
Property Claim Services said its estimate could go higher because some areas remain inaccessible. MEMO: The Associated Press contributed to this report.
KEYWORDS: HURRICANE FRAN by CNB