Don't Mess With Mississippi!

[Lindaloo]

"An uprising due to wind driven rain" That may mean surge but that is not what it says in the policy. Yeah sounds like clear wording to me!! GO DICKIE SCRUGGS!! Loss due to a hurricane, wind and hail, 2% deductible. Golly, the surge happened because?

I just received my renewal today and it is a whopping 1974.00 a year. Went up 600.00.

[Lindaloo]

yep.....

then you were covered under the flood policy...
surge took the whole structure... 165
you did better than most

Do you work in the insurance industry? An adjuster or agent?

[MGC]

Scruggs is an excellent attorney and I would not want to be an opposing attorney against him. He has an good argument. Hurricane deductible? Is surge part of a hurricane?. Unless the policy explicitly exempts surge then they might have a got ya clause.....MGC

[Camille_2_Katrina]

yep.....

then you were covered under the flood policy...
surge took the whole structure... 165
you did better than most

Do you work in the insurance industry? An adjuster or agent?

no... just a regular joe. got hit hard. we're gonna make it.
I read my contract and understand it.

close friends lived at the condos for decades.

[Camille_2_Katrina]

Scruggs is an excellent attorney and I would not want to be an opposing attorney against him. He has an good argument. Hurricane deductible? Is surge part of a hurricane?. Unless the policy explicitly exempts surge then they might have a got ya clause.....MGC

all home owner policies issued over the past 30 years here on the coast
explicity exempt surge... no question.

[Dionne]

I have worked the construction trades since 1975. In 1995, I went out on my own. We operate a small GC company in southern Mississippi. I have taken all sorts of courses and seminars. I have a fair amount of expertise on load and lift. We do alot of insurance work.

It is completely beyond me how an adjuster can determine what destroyed a structure when nothing remains. You would actually have to be there during the episode to really know the cause.

There have been alot of adjusters down here that are obviously new to the trade. It shows. Some of them cannot even climb ladders.

Different insurance companies are paying different amounts. Some folks come out fairly good. Others take a beating.

Unfortunately, most folks were under insured.

[dhweather]

A rush to judgement? You really don't have any idea who Dickie Scruggs is do you? lol.

Probably not.

He's a bulldog, he'll bite and won't let go.

He's a python, he'll wrap himself around you and squeeze until you give in.

GO GET 'EM DICKIE!

[Lindaloo]

Scruggs is an excellent attorney and I would not want to be an opposing attorney against him. He has an good argument. Hurricane deductible? Is surge part of a hurricane?. Unless the policy explicitly exempts surge then they might have a got ya clause.....MGC

all home owner policies issued over the past 30 years here on the coast
explicity exempt surge... no question.

Who are you insured with? Because they do not explicity exempt surge. The wording is " Your policy DOES NOT cover" then they word it "uprising"

Like I stated earlier, I received my renewal yesterday. Under "New Endorsements" they stated "This policy does not cover flood damage" LOL!!

I blame agents for this one too. ALOT of people do not know there is a thing called "excess flood" which would have covered everything. Of course, people can't get that now because we already flooded. The agents knew about this.

[Camille_2_Katrina]

Scruggs is an excellent attorney and I would not want to be an opposing attorney against him. He has an good argument. Hurricane deductible? Is surge part of a hurricane?. Unless the policy explicitly exempts surge then they might have a got ya clause.....MGC

all home owner policies issued over the past 30 years here on the coast
explicity exempt surge... no question.

Who are you insured with? Because they do not explicity exempt surge. The wording is " Your policy DOES NOT cover" then they word it "uprising"

Like I stated earlier, I received my renewal yesterday. Under "New Endorsements" they stated "This policy does not cover flood damage" LOL!!

I blame agents for this one too. ALOT of people do not know there is a thing called "excess flood" which would have covered everything. Of course, people can't get that now because we already flooded. The agents knew about this.

i think 99.9% of the blame goes to Katrina...

How come no one gets mad at Katrina? She was
the the one that stole everything from us!

[HurryKane]

Well, she did that whole hit and run thing and we never paid her to protect our things

[Pearl River]

Let me tell you something about the insurance company's. My wifes Uncle had plenty of tree's go through his roof and several lay against his house. His adjuster came out there and saw the leaves from trees removed dried on the outside wall of his house and told him he had flood damage. That area never flooded. The adjuster told him he was an expert on floods and waterlines.

[HurryKane]

That's crazy. I *still* have dried leaves on my siding that blew onto the house in the hurricane and have apparently become a permanent fixture....but there was zero flooding in my area.

[alicia-w]

We have USAA and they told us that "surge" was wind-driven water and that you had to have flood insurance for that.

[Bluefrog]

i was selling my condo and purchasing a condo at spinnaker pointe .... my contents were at spinnaker but i had not closed at spinnaker as my closing date was sept 1st ...... so i was not covered although state farm told me i was ......

[Lindaloo]

i was selling my condo and purchasing a condo at spinnaker pointe .... my contents were at spinnaker but i had not closed at spinnaker as my closing date was sept 1st ...... so i was not covered although state farm told me i was ......

Sounds like you have Don McKee.

I was in awe at Spinnaker Pointe and how one part of the complex stood. Jimbo Burnham (as you know) lost his condo AND his Mom lost her entire home on Wiggins Circle. She had nothing left but a slab. Heck that entire circle was flattened! Mrs. Burnham's car was in her neighbors pool. My husband tried to get it out but he kept getting stuck in that mucky smelly mud! Which I later found out that smelly mud was actually sewage. Blech!

[MSRobi911]

Our flood insurance adjuster was the nicest person to deal with, they paid our claim in full to my policy limits. We didn't have the top amount because we could not afford it as 1400.00 a year was already tipping the scale added to regular homeowners insurance. He stopped his report on the loss at the point of our policy limits. Oh, I only had a slab left when I finally got to my "home".

It took till October 21st for the homeowners insurance adjuster to finally make it to my "home" slab, I reported the claim the night Katrina came thru on my cell phone while sitting in the Jackson County Courthouse on the 4th floor where we had stayed throughout the storm and watched 5 1/2 feet of water come in on the ground floor. Then the adjuster said, well I'll have to contact the company and they will send out a structural engineer to determine what part was caused by wind and what part was caused by water. It took till December 20th for that structural engineer to come and look at a slab and try to tell me how my home was totally blown away with nothing but a slab to look at.

Everything we found that belonged to us was to the northeast....the water took stuff to the northwest......duh...a down burst?? a tornado?? there is evidence on the radar that shows red directly over Pascagoula before the water came in. Yes we were flooded, but that is not why my house is gone. What objects we could find you could put in 2 plastic buckets, no furniture, no clothing, a few dishes and a few photos and "what nots" were all that we could find.

We have yet to hear from Nationwide since October, the engineer said that "by law" we were entitled a copy of his report, we can't get a copy. His firm says they sent both copies to Nationwide and they won't return our phone calls!

So we sit and wait. We can't file for mediation because we haven't been denied, we can't file suit because we haven't been denied, we are in limbo and can not do anything. We had to pay off our mortgage with the flood insurance money and had to pay rent for a place to live until FEMA finally got us a trailer on October 31st....we were on a "priority" list because my husband is a deputy sheriff.....but it still took them 2 months to get us one.......I'll never forget the man that called me and said he was from FEMA and he asked me if I knew that I didn't have a water spigot.....duh....there is no house there, where do you think there would be a water spigot????? I had clearly checked on their form that there wasn't one there, but there was connection to the City water and sewer system....what a mess. We finally had to hire a plumber to come and install a water spigot so we could get a trailer cause FEMA wouldn't do it. Funny how they set up all these "trailer parks" and did that plumbing. Oh well!

Anyway, so here we sit almost 7 months later and only 2 months to when the new hurricane season starts and does our Federal Emergency Management Agency have a plan as to what to do with all the trailers here???? NOPE!!!!

Oh and to top it all off, we hadn't had our house appraised since we bought it, no need for it, why pay the $'s???? Well our tax CPA says we need a new appraisal to file our income tax for the loss......how do you appraise something that is not here anymore? I can't even get an appraiser to call me back!

Oh yea, my homeowners policy says all the things that ya'll say, but it does not include the words "storm surge"! That is one main point in Dickie's law suit. Mississippi law is "Word Specific" the new policies being issued now include those words....mine doesn't! My husband talked to Dickie, Mike Moore, former Attorney General in MS and Ray Mabius, former Governor of MS in Dickie's front yard a couple of months after the storm. They all asked how he did and when he told them Dickie, said don't worry son, I'm gonna take care of it and the other two agreed! Oh yea, by the way we are paying homeowners insurance on a "home" that does not exist because if we drop the policy, they won't cover us again and we have to go the wind pool and the 2% deductible.

And just an FYI there is already case law in Florida about the wind versus water issue and the homeowners won!!!!!!! The proof is on the insurance company to prove what came first.....so go Dickie go!!!!

Stepping off my soap box again,

Man I can get long winded...hahahhahahahaha

Mary

[Lindaloo]

You are not alone in all that, Mary. Doc Overstreet had to hire an attorney too and he had flood, plus homeowners'.

[Lindaloo]

Scruggs is an excellent attorney and I would not want to be an opposing attorney against him. He has an good argument. Hurricane deductible? Is surge part of a hurricane?. Unless the policy explicitly exempts surge then they might have a got ya clause.....MGC

all home owner policies issued over the past 30 years here on the coast
explicity exempt surge... no question.

Who are you insured with? Because they do not explicity exempt surge. The wording is " Your policy DOES NOT cover" then they word it "uprising"

Like I stated earlier, I received my renewal yesterday. Under "New Endorsements" they stated "This policy does not cover flood damage" LOL!!

I blame agents for this one too. ALOT of people do not know there is a thing called "excess flood" which would have covered everything. Of course, people can't get that now because we already flooded. The agents knew about this.

i think 99.9% of the blame goes to Katrina...

How come no one gets mad at Katrina? She was
the the one that stole everything from us!

How in the hell can you get mad at Mother Nature? You are insured to be protected against this type of thing.

[greeng13]

I blame agents for this one too. ALOT of people do not know there is a thing called "excess flood" which would have covered everything. Of course, people can't get that now because we already flooded. The agents knew about this

my understanding after talking to my allstate agent here....(way before the storms)... is that all flood insurance goes through the gov't (the NATIONAL FLOOD INSURANCE PROGRAM) anyways...so it is not like your company is making money (or at least not much) on the deal....

from this link for instance: http://www.sfbcic.com/flood/

Flood Insurance is offered through the National Flood Insurance Program

or visit this site: http://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/pages/index.jsp

unfortunately it could not be predicted how far the flood water would go in MS or AL for instance but....flood maps will probably be re-drawn and if you are out of a flood zone it is not all that expensive.


just my 2 cents

[Lindaloo]

No, the company doesn't... but the agent does. It is UP to the agent to explain the "excess flood coverage" and I KNOW where what flood is. Your agent writes it, regardless. What does that tell ya? YOUR agent is NOT going to admit to a darn thing, I don't care who you are. I worked for Allstate for 12 years so...

That is a false statement about the water not being predicted. This was a CAT5 storm that came across some very warm water. Surge is always predicted in ANY storm! They issued a mandetory evac for everyone south of HWY 90 here, somebody KNEW something. Since we did not flood from a CAT5 storm before the mindset was we won't again. Sooner or later our luck will run out anywhere a hurricane can strike. Unfortunately this was our big one.