QUESTION
Hurricane sandy destroyed my neighborhood, what should we do?
Asked on Dec 07th, 2012 on Insurance - New York
More details to this question:
Many of us who live in zone A area who had flood insurance lost almost everything, most of us did not have personal property protection on our flood insurance because we had it on our home insurance policy. But home owners insurance is saying that they are not liable for giving us anything we lost because the damage was done by flood waters. Flood insurance only covers structural damage, many of us lost our fences, patios, pools etc. besides our personal things and no one is covering those losses. FEMA wont help many of us because we have insurance. What are our legal rights? Who should we turn too? Public Adjusters? Attorneys?
1 ANSWER
Thatcher Stone
The right answer to this is not what you will want to hear.
Generally home insurance policies do not respond to a widespread felt risk. Each of you will have to have a lawyer review your policy language to make a determination. If there is an issue in the homeowners' policy that you feel the insurers are being unfair about, some of you could get together and bring a class action or individual actions if necessary.
Our office is available to review policy language with no obligation and no attorney cost to see if there is a basis on which to go forward.
If you can establish to FEMA's satisfaction that some aspects of your loss are critical and uninsured you may, and I stress may, recover some limited assistance form FEMA.
The following is a link to FEMA's website and may be helpful:-
www.fema.gov/disaster-help-available-if-I-have-insurance
Thatcher Stone
Answered on Dec 08th, 2012 at 3:53 PM