Cold Man Winter strikes water pipes; insurers deluged

A home in Brooklyn, N.Y., got colder and colder even as the owners turned up the heat, while a house in Paducah, Ky., had an inch of water in four rooms. They were both victims of water pipes that cracked in the deep freeze that has much of the nation in its icy grip. America’s largest insurance company, State Farm, says it has had so many claims for frozen pipes — 28,000 in the Jan. 4-9 period of extreme cold — that it declared the situation a "catastrophe," allowing it to bring in more adjusters to handle the overload.