Declarations

Congressional fight

“This is going to be a fight. These guys have dumped a lot of money in campaigns. They dumped $27 million in the presidential race, most of it going to the winner just a couple of years ago. But they’re wrong on this one.”

U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., calling for a congressional investigation into the post-Hurricane Katrina practices of private insurance companies.

Absence of sprinklers

“I think they would have made a huge difference.”

City Fire Marshal David Bias explaining that there was no sprinkler system in the five-story apartment building in Huntington, West Virginia, where fire killed at least seven people, including a child. The building housed city residents and students from Marshall University. Woodlark Enterprises Inc. of White Plains, N.Y, owns the building.

Sparking controversy

“This is like suddenly telling an electrician that he now also has to become a plumber.”

Neil Alldredge, vice president of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, criticizing Florida lawmakers for considering provisions requiring insurers writing homeowners insurance in other states to write the same coverage in Florida or requiring auto insurance-only companies to now write homeowners. He called the provisions likely “unconstitutional.”

Flood memory

“It was the middle of the night. We took nothing with us but what we had on our backs. My father wouldn’t leave.”

Vip Lewis, now 80, who still remembers the flooding 70 years ago of her Ohio River valley community. The National Weather Service said the flood reached 80 feet, nearly 30 feet above flood stage in January, 1937.

Stock scandal

“If it were a problem, D&O rates wouldn’t be going down.”

Jay Gelb, non-life insurance equity analyst for Lehman Brothers, suggesting that the insurance industry is not too worried about directors and officers’ liability claims from the emerging scandal over backdating of stock options.