Federal and state officials and insurers were still scrambling yesterday to assess the destruction and total costs for the thousands of claims from a swath of killer tornadoes that ended Sunday after tearing a line from the Florida Gulf to Canada.
One state official in Ohio said multi-million dollar damages were involved.
The insurer with the most numbers at hand was Nationwide, based in the hard-hit state of Ohio, where five of 36-reported tornado deaths occurred.
Bob Cunningham, a Nationwide spokesman in Columbus, said the company today had a little over 200 claims with an estimated payout of $2.1 million. He said the company so far had no estimates of commercial damage.
