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  • Chinese drywall a New Orleans issue

    Anyone thinking that this issue is not going to make an effect in the New Orleans and greater Louisiana area is going to be surprised we think. This isn’t just a Florida issue. The health symptoms of Chinese drywall exposure are being documented and it’s only a matter of time before homeowners begin finding out the faulty product is in their homes. Chinese drywall symptoms may not only be in regards to your health, though, as damage to the surrounding property of the drywall has been documented, reported and is currently being investigated.

    Contact an attorney at the Berniard Law Firm for more information about this drywall disaster and/or check out the Chinese Drywall section of this site for more information regarding symptoms, home/property damage and other things relating to this issue.

    Symptoms of Chinese drywall exposure include

    1. Breathing irregularities/problems
    2. Allergy-like reactions
    3. Nose bleeds
    4. Nausea
    5. Insomnia
    6. Migraines
    7. Headaches
    8. Dizziness
    9. Fatigue
    10. Eye Irritation

  • New website features Open Galveston attractions

    Submitted by a reader (and we love our readers!), a new website is available to see just what popular attractions and sites on the island of Galveston are open! Check out Galveston Now Open! to see just what sites you can visit that have recovered from Hurricane Ike.

    Much like the determination and rigor that New Orleans demonstrated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the site features the emerging “Now Open” signs across the Texas island and the optimism this demonstrates for the Gulf Coast region.

    A snippet from the site describing the rebuilding efforts:

    But soon the landscape changed. Bright, colorful signs were popping up all over the island, shouting “Now Open.” Galveston businesses were telling residents and recovery workers that they were open to serve them.

    But who was telling the rest of the world that Galveston is Now Open? Well, I thought, that’s what the Internet is for! Because of the work I do to create web sites and market them, I wanted to put the Internet to work for Galveston.

    I started taking the photos on January 3, when my son and I attend the grand re-opening of the Grand Opera House. The Press Box next door had their hand-drawn “open” sign on a white board propped up against the front wall. I had been toying with the idea for several weeks, because the signs, although temporary, were such a welcome sight against the piles of debris and destruction.

    So since then I’ve been driving around with my camera and snapping pictures of the ever-growing number of “Now Open” signs on the Island. I really like the photos that show the juxtaposition of the storm damage to the resilient statement that a “Now Open” sign makes.

    If for nothing else, the site is worth a look just to see the rebuilding effort and determination being demonstrated in the wake of the sheer destruction Hurricane Ike caused. The best of luck to the citizens of Galveston in their rebuilding effort and thanks to Veronica for the heads up.

    Again, the link to the site is available here (http://sites.google.com/site/gnowopen/Home).

  • One Month Until Hurricane Season Begins

    While a tropical storm can pop at any point that the water and air temperatures are “right,” June 1st is commonly considered to be the beginning of “Hurricane Season.”

    Things to consider now, or at least before June 1st, are your preparedness for a large tropical storm or hurricane, the storage of important documentation relating to insurance and your home and/or property, evacuation plans and various other steps. Feel free to browse our section on storm and hurricane preparedness tips, located here, and make sure you complete your checklist before storm season gets here.

    In the event a storm does cause damage to your home and you feel the insurance companies are not giving you the covered financial restitution you feel you deserve, contact a legal professional immediately. The Berniard Law Firm prides itself on taking on insurance companies and defending Gulf Coast residents against bullying or undercutting insurers.

  • Galveston on the Rebound

    On Sunday, the Nashua Telegraph featured in their Living section a nice write-up about the recovery effort going on for the residents of Galveston. While there is still a lot of work to be done, it appears that the heart and desire is there for locals to completely rebuild the area after the devastation left by Hurricane Ike:

    Despite these and a handful of other shuttered buildings, Galveston has reopened for business just in time for the spring tourism season.

    The Flagship is one of only four of the island’s 40 hotels that remain closed since the Category 2 storm tore through town.

    Across town, the island’s most popular theme park, Moody Gardens, reopened its storm-damaged rain forest and aquarium exhibits in March. Also last month, crews at the nearby Schlitterbahn Galveston Island Waterpark reopened its 70,000-square-foot indoor recreation area after a six-month cleanup. Among the features added during the overhaul were free wireless Internet, a large palapa structure and a wireless wristband debit system that allows visitors to buy food without carrying cash or a credit card.

    A week after the reopening, park spokesman Jeffrey Siebert said attendance had kept pace with previous years.

    While the news can be marred in the dark and depressing stories that develop from hurricanes and tropical storms, as well as the hardships that come in the wake of such tragedies, it is also important to see write-ups about things getting better. Galveston appears to be on the road to recovery and that’s a wonderful thing to read and see. The article does mention that “many residents are still struggling to rebuild homes and wrestling with insurance claims and contractors,” which is a shame but a reality after any devastation like that of Hurricane Ike. Receiving legal assistance when these delays occur should be a number one priority for anyone who has the will and desire to rebuild and return to a normal life but is finding the technicalities, bureaucracy or bullying of insurance claims to be getting in their way.

  • SE Texas Residents expected to sue soon over Ike delays

    In the wake of insurance companies backing out of agreements intended to help policy holders rebuild their homes and move on with their lives, SE Texas residents are beginning to feel the need to turn to the legal system to receive the money they are owed. KBMT news did a feature on an impending ‘explosion’ of lawsuits after insurance companies like Allstate have gone back on deals that it had made with policy holders.

    Kim and Terry Cooper have lived in their Orange County home for 10 years but were dumbfounded when their insurance company walked away from the Cooper’s damage claims.

    “They kept putting us off it seemed like Allstate was trying to keep their money as long as they wanted” said Kim Cooper.

    The Coopers have already repaired the hole in their roof they say was caused by Hurricane Ike when a tree crashed into their roof. They are also dealing with a cracked foundation – all damages that they say ultimately made the home unlivable.

    It is important that specific steps are taken when making repairs while waiting for insurance company money to come in. This includes, but is not limited to, making only necessary repairs while closely documenting the cost and work done to guarantee your claim is for the appropriate amount and is not lower because of the work you have done.

    The article quantifies the issue

    Fourteen lawsuits were filed in Jefferson County in the past week alone – all residents who say they are not happy with the relief offered by their insurance company and Brashers says that’s only the beginning. The week before there were six.

    If your insurance company is giving you the run-around, stop waiting for them to do the right thing and look into your legal options with an attorney. The Berniard Law Firm is equipped with experts and lawyers that are fully capable of reviewing and handling your issue. Contact the firm today if you feel that your insurance company is not handling your matter with the seriousness or care you deserve.

  • Florida Insurance Bill Moving Forward

    In looking to decrease its exposure, the Florida legislature has moved forward on legislation that will raise premiums on owners of state-backed Citizens Property Insurance policies. The Miami Herald reports:

    Lawmakers approved the proposal (HB 1495) Thursday that would increase rates on a gradual basis for customers of the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. The policyholders would see premiums increased an average of 10 percent in the next several years to avoid a potential one-time increase of between 40 and 55 percent on Jan. 1.

    The House vote could come Friday.

    Lawmakers are trying to decrease the state’s $20 billion exposure on the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund by shoring up Citizens by getting all of its policies actuarially sound.

    This is what happens when insurance companies like State Farm abandon markets when they’re not allowed to charge however much they would like. This is a dangerous territory Florida will be finding itself in and something residents of the Gulf Coast need to keep an eye on should this occur in their state.

  • Forensic experts investigate Chinese Drywall

    Placing a scientific and unbiased opinion on the issues relating to drywall imported from China, forensic experts have begun looking into the effects and problems involved with Chinese drywall. Along with the interesting fact that the crisis has already led to people taking advantage of panic (“One company is already cashing in and selling a Chinese drywall inspection kit,” says Derry. “It is made to test water samples for sulfur levels—to determine if water is drinkable. I talked to the manufacturer and he said it would not work on drywall”), details of how and why the drywall got into the country are discussed:

    “Regardless of what people say about US building developers and contractors, for the most part they didn’t buy Chinese drywall to save money but ordered it simply for supply and demand,” says Doug Derry, field services manager, CBI Forensics. And there was a lot of demand after Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. “Shipping records show that since 2006, 550 million pounds of drywall were imported from China into the US—enough for about 100,000 homes.”

    Derry says forensics inspectors started to investigate allegedly toxic drywall in December 2008. Based on what they saw, Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin LTD., which is a subsidiary of German-based Knauf, supplies upwards of 50 countries with drywall and insulation. America ran out of drywall during the building boom, so between 2004 and 2007 Chinese drywall was being used to build American homes. (On March 24, 2009 Florida’s Atttorney General launched a criminal investigation into Knauf and L&W Supply Corp, to investigate whether the companies committed any deceptive sales or marketing practices.)

    “Interestingly, you can hear so much about building companies such as Lennar but more often than not, they trust their drywall contractor to supply, install and tape the houses,” explains Derry. “All they know is that they order their subcontractors to begin delivering the drywall in preparation for installation. Perhaps during this period of time this Chinese drywall was available quickly and in the sizes and thicknesses required for the job.”

    The density of this issue continues to increase as fraudulent “investigators” have begun to pop up and the issue does not seem as open-shut for guilt as it did before.

  • States Outside of Gulf Coast Eyeing Danger of Hurricanes

    A Maryland based group recently studied the effects of a hurricane hitting the Northeast and found the results would be economically devastating. Using only a category 3 hurricane in their analysis (Gustav and Katrina were both 4’s), the group found that such a storm could cause upwards of $130 billion in insured residential losses.

    There’s “definitely the potential for very large events (in the Northeast), but they’re fairly infrequent,” said David Smith, senior vice president of EQECAT, a risk management company in Oakland, Calif.

    Some 250 insurance industry professionals, academics and others attended a Willis Research Network summit on Category 3 hurricanes in the Northeast at Princeton University on Thursday. And they heard talks on hurricane and climate science and hurricane, storm surge and flood risks in the Northeast.

    “This is a collective journey into a new era of science,” said Rowan Douglas, chairman of the Willis Research Network, the world’s largest partnership between academia and the insurance industry.

    The events that unfolded in New Orleans and Galveston have brought new national attention to the danger of “improbable” hurricanes striking the US. While any national exposure to the effects of hurricane strikes is positive education for the masses on what Gulf Coast residents face yearly, it is important to also note that the losses were based on insured homes. The Gulf Coast still faces the problem of insurance lapses and ambiguity and it is important that homeowners reread and, possibly, recalculate the coverage they need before each hurricane season begins.

  • China denies responsibility for drywall

    In an interesting little article that may have slipped through the cracks for many, the Wall Street Journal discusses claims by Chinese officials that the drywall issue is, potentially, an American myth of sorts. Xu Luoyi, head of the National Building Materials Industrial Technology Supervisory Research Center, notes that the Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin Company provided drywall for a variety of projects across the world and that the only complaints emerging are from the US:

    “It’s worth considering why this problem has only emerged in the United States,” said Xu. “The U.S. credit crisis has caused the real estate market to collapse, and as a result domestic drywall manufacturers have seen their sales suffer and their product is relatively expensive compared to the Chinese-made drywall, so we should also consider these issues.”

    Take it for what it’s worth but Xu does provide interesting claims, including that Knauf’s drywall was used for a wide assortment of projects. Knauf, per Xu,

    supplied drywall to 75% of the construction projects for the Beijing Olympics, including the iconic Bird’s Nest and Water Cube, as well as for many other major projects such as Mao Zedong’s mausoleum and the National Theater in Beijing and Hong Kong Disneyland.

    Just an interesting set of circumstances that may need further review as lawsuits against Knauf emerge and develop.

  • Texas Windstorm Insurance facing financial crisis

    Texas’ state-run wind damage insurance program has fallen into financial crisis as a result of settlements and payouts in the face of recent hurricanes. Insurance reform has been pushed to the top of Governor Perry’s priority list in the new legislative session but things are not looking good for the program:

    An arduous task is ahead for Texas legislators as they continue to hammer out measures meant to shore up the state’s property insurance market in time for this year’s hurricane season, which begins June 1.

    While it continues to pay claims from Hurricane Ike last September, the state-run Texas Windstorm Insurance Association is in a “severe financial crisis,” said Jerry Johns, president of the Southwestern Insurance Information Service and a spokesman for TWIA, which he said has depleted the Catastrophe Reserve Trust Fund. In addition, reinsurance expires May 31, he said.

    “If TWIA was in the private market, it would be in receivership,” he added.

    TWIA used up all of the cash it had on hand after Hurricane Dolly in July 2008 and dipped into the cat fund. The association assessed its member insurers $100 million before the larger Ike made landfall in the state in September. In its aftermath, TWIA assessed insurers another $430 million in order to be able to tap into reinsurance to pay claims (BestWire, Sept. 15, 2008). TWIA expects $2.7 billion in losses from Ike.

    This is not good news as Florida’s state-run insurance programs will be burdened by State Farm’s departure and shows a severe problem that may become more and more prevalent and worrisome as years go on. It is important for property and home owners to maintain proper insurance as time wears on because full protection with legal assistance is one of the only solid manners in which policy holders can prevent troubles in the future should damage befall them.