Florida Insurers Brace For Wilma

Insurers in Florida today were arranging for the services of adjusters, anticipating that Hurricane Wilma will be arriving this weekend as the eighth hurricane to hit the state in 14 months.

"We're finding we have them, but a lot of adjusters are working in other states," said Sam Miller, executive vice president of the Florida Insurance Council.

Mark Saunders, a meteorologist with Tropical Storm Risk, Benfield Hazard Research Center in London, said Wilma==which at its peak today featured wind speeds of 175 miles-per-hour==will probably hit Southwest Florida as a Category 3 hurricane with sustained wind speeds of 120 mph to 130 mph.

Mr. Miller said his group, which includes 300 property-casualty insurers, is "confident it won't come in at 170 mph," adding that Florida is "the best prepared state in the country to handle a hurricane."

He said the repeated strikes on the state have meant that companies need to reassess their long-term estimates of catastrophe losses, and "when they do that, a lot are finding their rates are going to go up."

Mr. Miller said insurers were "scrounging for adjusters," but added that "there are plenty of adjusters==we're lining them up. A lot have just finished up in the Gulf States and have come home. They probably weren't expecting to get back to work this soon."

At the Florida Emergency Operations Center, spokesperson Christy Campbell said personnel there had been monitoring the hurricane's approach for a few days.

Yesterday, she said, the center began twice daily coordination conference calls, which linked preparedness coordinators in South Florida counties that might be affected.

Although the center is now only on Level Two, partial activation status, she said mobilization activity has already begun with pre-positioning of ice, water and food supplies.

Florida, she noted, has a strong emergency infrastructure. "We prepare for this annually," she said.

Wilma hit the maximum Category 5 level on the Safir-Simpson scale today and was sending drenching rains onto Jamaica, Cuba, Nicaragua and Honduras as it plowed through the Caribbean.