The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has created a new Web-based service with total-loss data for consumers so they can learn if a vehicle has previously been severely wrecked, flooded or stolen.

As gas prices soar, the costs of running a volunteer fire department are rising. Now West Virginia legislature and the counties are debating over who will pay the rising costs of the state’s 424 volunteer departments.

Floodwaters receding into the Mississippi River and its tributaries will suck billions of dollars out of the Midwest’s economy, though experts have not agreed on whether the damage will be as devastating as the 1993 flooding.

Residents in Sioux Falls, S.D., continued to top the chart as the safest drivers in the U.S., according to the fourth annual Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report. The average driver in Sioux Falls experiences an auto collision every 14.6 years. Compared to the national likelihood of a collision every 10 years - Sioux Falls motorists are 31.6 percent less likely to have an accident than the national average.

BrickStreet Insurance now isn’t the only Workers’ Compensation insurance provider in West Virginia. Beginning today, the state opens up the market to other insurance companies offering Workers’ Compensation coverage. About 160 providers thus far have filed to offer employers their services in the state.

Cars, SUVs, and pickups share the road but they don’t share the same standard for bumpers. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has petitioned the federal government to regulate the bumpers on light trucks (SUVs, pickups, and vans) just as it regulates those on cars. The same bumper rules should apply to all kinds of passenger vehicles.

Catastrophe risk consulting firm Global Risk Miyamoto sent a team to study the damage and survey client properties, but returned with a much broader view of what they saw. "Risk management is really needed, really needed in China," said GRM Co-Chair Kit Miyamoto.

t 1:40 p.m. Sunday, Dustin Foreman sank his boot hooks into the Southern yellow pine of a still-new power pole behind a row of ranch houses and climbed like Spiderman to the top. It was hard for Robin Marlowe to comprehend the scope of the damage to her home on Woolworth Avenue, smashed by a tree that fell from her grandmother’s yard nearby.

With federal aid limited and most homes damaged or destroyed by Midwest flooding lacking the proper insurance, states along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers will soon have to help homeowners recover, according to the nation’s No. 1 disaster official.

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt on Thursday signed a law mandating that workers compensation benefits paid from Missouri’s Second Injury Fund end with the injured worker’s death.

Following nearly 8,000 lightning strikes that set more than 800 wildfires across Northern California, a meterologist is predicting much worse conditions throughout the rest of the fire season. "This doesn’t bode well for the fire season,’’ said Ken Clark, a meteorologist in Southern California with AccuWeather.com.

New Jersey lawmakers have approved a number of major changes to the Garden State’s workers’ compensation insurance system. The reforms comprise a package of six bills passed earlier this week by the Assembly and Senate that, among other things, more harshly punish insurers for failure to pay claims (S1913) and create criminal charges and stiffer penalties for employers who fail to buy workers comp insurance (S1914).

Man’s best friend is sinking its teeth into homeowners insurance costs. Dog bites now account for one-third of all homeowners insurance liability claims, costing $356.2 million in 2007, up 10.5 percent from the previous year, according to the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.).

They say that lightning never strikes in the same place twice, but for insurers, it strikes hundreds of thousands of times annually, causing millions of dollars in damages. In fact, the cost of homeowners claims for damage due to lightning strikes has increased dramatically—up 28 percent over the last four years, according to the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.).

California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner today warned drivers to be on the look out for scam artists who stage auto collisions in order to file fraudulent insurance claims. At a news conference at Qualcomm Stadium, Poizner said the scam not only endangers drivers but is also costly.