Word: flooded
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...FLOOD INSURANCE...
...eight Atlantic states staggered out from the most costly floods in U.S. history last week, underwriters reported that insurance will cover only 5 to 10% of losses totaling $1.6 billion. Worst hit were railroads, industrial plants, cities and houses, most of which were massively insured against every disaster but the one that struck. "There just isn't any flood insurance available." lamented a spokesman for the New Haven railroad, whose $10 million losses were among the ravaged area's heaviest...
...flood insurance so hard to get? Insurance companies fear that in major floods they could not begin to meet the claims for damage to real property, e.g., buildings and machinery, which are most susceptible to water damage. Insurers believe that they can economically cover only property which can be moved out of the flood's path. Thus, in the Northeast, the companies' heaviest payments will be for wrecked or damaged cars, boats, and goods in transit. The small percentage of homeowners who had all-risk personal-property floaters also can collect for damage to belongings...
...other hand, many policyholders who assumed that they were at least partly protected are in for a disappointment. For example, some businessmen whose plants were wrecked or halted by the flood, hoped to be reimbursed for loss of income under business interruption policies. But most of these policies specifically exclude interruptions caused by flood...
...principal economic argument against flood insurance is the nature of the risk. The most destructive (average yearly toll: some $420 million) and widespread calamities in the U.S., floods tend to haunt the same areas, e.g.. the Missouri and the Mississippi river basins, which had floods costing more than $1.5 billion from 1936 through 1951. Said one insurance executive: "Potentially, every insurance company could be bankrupted by one casualty...