National property/casualty carriers are breathing sighs of relief as revised estimates of insurable damages from Hurricane Floyd have been lowered from earlier predictions of $4 billion to $1.3 billion, according to the Insurance Services Office's Property Claim Service (PCS), based in Rahway, N.J. That number is expected to continue fluctuating as the flood waters recede and investigators are allowed into what have been mostly inaccessible areas.
Floyd, the latest storm to be dubbed "the storm of the century" by media and relief organizations, caused damage across 16 states, with North Carolina bearing the lion's share of damage. PCS estimates personal and commercial property losses — including automobile physical damage — in North Carolina amounts to $835 million. New Jersey rates a distant second, with insured damage estimates of $84 million.
