Close to 20 inches of snow piled up at the nation’s capital as a blizzard pounded mid-Atlantic states Saturday, cutting power to hundreds of thousands in the region in what the president referred to as "Snowmaggedon." Snow was falling from southern Indiana eastward to New York City, Washington, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the New Jersey coast.

Big auto insurers will be examining past auto accident claims involving Toyota vehicles for possible subrogation action, an insurance arbitration executive predicted, as Allstate said it has a case review underway. Mark Bunim, president and chief executive of Case Closure--a New York-based insurance arbitration and mediation firm--said large auto insurers are “going to amalgamate their serious claims involving Toyotas over the past five or six months, and see how many of them are tied to or could be tied to the gas pedal recall.”

As hundreds of workers prepared to deploy Sunday to empty catch basins once again filled with mud and debris, all evacuation orders were lifted for residents of Southern California’s foothills. L.A. County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida said the evacuation orders had been lifted, including for Paradise Valley in La Cañada Flintridge.

Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry said state officials are working with their counterparts in surrounding states to speed the flow of power repair supplies and other provisions to communities hard hit by the ice storm in late January. “We appreciate the cooperation from neighboring states and will continue to count on their support as we work to restore power in the affected communities,” Gov. Henry said in an announcement on the governor’s Web site.

Damage and loss from yesterday’s magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck offshore Northern California are expected to be less than $10 million, with insured losses a fraction of that, a risk modeling firm has reported. The moderate quake struck at 12:20 p.m. PST on Feb. 4, 2010, about 35 miles from Petolia and 50 miles from Eureka, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

No-fault auto insurance fraud is estimated to have added almost $229 million in costs to the insurance system in 2009 and it is time to stop the rip-off of hard working New Yorkers, according to Paul Blume, senior vice president, state government affairs for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) who will testify tomorrow at a Senate Insurance Committee hearing.

The Nissan Frontier has the strongest roof and the Chevrolet Colorado the weakest among 5 small pickup trucks, all 2010 models, that recently were tested for rollover protection by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The Frontier, also sold as the Suzuki Equator, is the only pickup in the group to earn the highest rating of good. The Ford Ranger is rated acceptable while the Dodge Dakota, Toyota Tacoma, and Colorado (also sold as the GMC Canyon) earn the second lowest rating of marginal.

It’s more than two miles long, 25 feet high and contains enough steel to build eight Eiffel Towers. The Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Surge Barrier under construction near New Orleans is a massive undertaking, said Col. Robert Sinkler, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Hurricane Protection Office. The $1.1 billion project is about 53 percent complete after eight months of construction and is expected to provide some protection to New Orleans this hurricane season, which starts June 1.

Kraft Foods Inc. failed to provide sufficient evidence of available alternative employment when it attempted to reduce a workers compensation claimant’s partial disability benefits, a Pennsylvania appeals court ruled Friday. The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in Kraft Foods Inc. and ESIS-Wilmington WC vs. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board upheld an appeal board conclusion that ...

In the wake of massive ice storms that virtually shut down the state of Oklahoma in late January, Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland has declared a state of emergency that allows the commissioner to “license as an emergency adjuster” any resident or non-resident applicant. On Jan. 28 and 29, severe winter storms swept through the state causing widespread damage that has been deemed a statewide catastrophe.

Toyota Motor Sales (TMS) U.S.A., Inc., today announced it will begin fixing accelerator pedals in recalled Toyota Division vehicles this week. Toyota’s engineers have developed and rigorously tested a solution that involves reinforcing the pedal assembly in a manner that eliminates the excess friction that has caused the pedals to stick in rare instances.

As state legislators across the United States enact laws that ban phoning and/or texting while driving, a new Highway Loss Data Institute study finds no reductions in crashes after hand-held phone bans take effect. Comparing insurance claims for crash damage in 4 US jurisdictions before and after such bans, the researchers find steady claim rates compared with nearby jurisdictions without such bans.

Thousands of State Farm Florida property insurance customers will be seeing notices in their mailboxes this week saying their policies will not be renewed, a company spokesman said. The first wave of notices will be mailed Monday to a selected number of the company’s policyholders who were set to renew Aug. 1, spokesman Chris Neal said.

The Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) today applauded a Florida study committee’s conclusion that “the current system for assessing, determining, and applying windstorm mitigation discounts has failed to operate as intended and has contributed to problems in the residential property insurance marketplace.”

The 2010 Atlantic Hurricane season will be more active than the 50-year average and the relatively quiet 2009 season, forecasters at WSI Corp. said Tuesday. WSI expects 13 named storms, seven hurricanes and three intense hurricanes with sustained Category 3 winds of 111-130 miles per hour in the season which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. That’s more than the 50-year average of 10 storms, six hurricanes and three intense hurricanes, but near the 15-year average of 14 storms, eight hurricanes and four intense hurricanes.