It Figures

$1.5 Billion

The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association is asking the Texas Department of Insurance for the go-ahead to purchase $1.5 billion in catastrophe reinsurance coverage over a retention of $600 million. TWIA is aiming to build up protection for $2.3 billion in potential exposures to which the wind pool association says it is vulnerable in certain areas along the Texas coast. TWIA Executive Director Jim Oliver told regulators at a hearing in early May that four coastal locations had the potential to “present TWIA with a catastrophe loss in excess of $1 billion.” Two locations, Oliver said, hold the potential for more than $2 billion to $3 billion in loses with a “moderate or severe hurricane. Three years ago TWIA only had one location with a potential for a $3 billion loss and another with a potential of a loss of slightly above $1 billion.”

25/50/25

A Louisiana House of Representatives committee approved HB 1312, which would raise the minimum insurance coverage Louisiana motorists must carry on their vehicles from the current limits of $10,000 for bodily injury liability to one person, $20,000 for bodily injury liability for two or more persons injured in any one accident, and $10,000 for property damage liability (commonly stated as 10/20/10 limits) to 25/50/25. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Erich Ponti, R-Baton Rouge, says the bill would bring Louisiana’s minimum limits up to the level of neighboring states. Insurance industry groups oppose the bill on the grounds it will make the cost of minimum auto coverage too expensive. Then-Governor Kathleen Blanco vetoed a similar bill last year for the same reason.

21

Tornadoes killed at least 21 people and injured hundreds as they ripped through the central and southeastern United States over the weekend of May 10 and 11, destroying homes, overturning cars and downing trees and power lines. Six people were killed in the Picher, Okla., once a bustling mining center of 20,000 that dwindled to about 800 people as families fled lead pollution there. An additional 14 people died in Missouri and one person was killed in Georgia as the storms tracked a course from the border of Kansas and Oklahoma into Georgia. Picher, in far northeastern Oklahoma, is the site of one of the nation’s largest environmental disasters because of leftover mining waste. A suspected E-F3 tornado also swept through Stuttgart, Ark. There were three reported injuries but no deaths reported, however, authorities said there was “substantial structural damage” in Stuttgart, the Associated Press reported.