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Mother Jones) Hurricane Idalia struck Florida 190 miles north of Tampa on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm, a classification that causes “devastating” damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. With 125-mile-per-hour winds upon landfall, it fell just short of the Category 4 metric.
This region of Florida hasn’t seen such strong wind gusts and storm surges in more than 125 years. Many roads are flooded, with water levels up to at least 8 feet.
“We have multiple trees down, debris in the roads, do not come,” posted the fire and rescue department of Cedar Key, an island connected to the mainland by bridges. There, water levels are at least 6.5 feet high. “We have propane tanks blowing up all over the island.”
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..... recent changes to Florida’s tort laws orchestrated by GOP lawmakers and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis will make it much harder for home insurance policyholders to sue their insurers for failing to adequately pay out claims for home damage. Idalia is the first hurricane to hit Florida since the laws were re-written in December 2022, following Hurricane Ian:
The sweeping revisions makes it more difficult for homeowners to sue their property insurance companies for acting in “bad faith” and removes the right of homeowners to recover attorney’s fees, even in lawsuits they ultimately win. Additionally, the adjustments to Florida’s insurance laws allow insurance companies to create new policies with mandatory binding arbitration agreements in exchange for a premium reduction, which will also thwart many homeowners’ option to take insurers to court…Moreover, the legislation shortened the window in which policy holders can file claims with their insurers, invested $1 billion of taxpayer funds into a state-run reinsurance fund to help insurance companies mitigate their losses in the event of catastrophic events, and narrowed eligibility for Citizens, Florida’s state-run nonprofit insurance company that provides insurance to people who cannot find affordable coverage on the regular market.
Home insurance premiums in the state are already four times the national average and still rising. ..................(more)
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/08/hurricane-idalia-desantis-home-insurance/
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DeSantis' New Insurance Law Could Make It Harder to Rebuild After Hurricane Idalia (Original post)
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