Nine catastrophes during the first quarter will cost insurers an estimated $3.35 billion in property-casualty claims from homeowners and businesses, Property Claim Services announced today.

According to the report from PCS, a unit of Insurance Services Office in Jersey City, N.J., the nine events include one that was solely a workers' compensation loss--the Feb. 8 Imperial Sugar plant explosion at Port Wentworth, Ga.

PCS said no estimate of the explosion-related insured workers' comp loss has yet been determined. PCS qualifies an event as a catastrophe when there is an insured loss of $25 million affecting a significant number of policyholders and insurance companies.

The remaining eight catastrophes, PCS said, generated 615,000 claims in 22 states. Seven of these were caused by severe weather--damaging wind, large hail, flooding and tornadoes--and one was caused by a winter storm.

The remaining eight events, said PCS, represent the greatest frequency in the first quarter since 1999--tied with the eight events declared in 2005. The insured property loss, it said, is the largest in the last decade.

Of the 22 states, the five with the largest insured property losses were Georgia ($610 million), Tennessee ($535 million), California ($360 million), Texas ($270 million) and Arkansas ($223 million).

The costliest event of the quarter, put by PCS at $955 million, was caused by an outbreak of severe weather that spread from Texas to Ohio in early February. That catastrophe caused about 120,000 losses in the eight affected states.

The first catastrophe of the year, a winter storm in January, affected 13 states and caused an estimated $745 million of insured property damage. It also inflicted damage to 177,000 personal and commercial properties and vehicles.

Claims in personal lines produced 56 percent of the total $3.35 billion loss for the quarter, or nearly $1.9 billion. The commercial property loss was 31 percent of the total, or just over $1 billion. The loss involving insured vehicles totaled almost $500 million, or 13 percent of the total loss.

According to PCS historical data, in the previous nine years the largest first-quarter dollar loss was $2.14 billion in 2005 when there were eight catastrophes.

Special Reports /

First-Quarter P-C Insurers' Cat Loss $3.35 Billion

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