What is Digg?210 Comments
- jwdarkstar, on 10/10/2007, -5/+81Wasn't it the lack of the correct insurance that caused them to be screwed? Additional flood insurance would seem to be a pretty logical purchase for anyone with property below sea level. Anyone that failed to check their coverage or refused extra coverage should have thought it over carefully.
- GinaJuice, on 10/10/2007, -16/+68Why is a term as vague as "Acts of God" in a contract?
WTF, What's God doing in contracts in the first place? - srgtTarantula, on 10/10/2007, -9/+58To bad it was caused by the reaction of low pressure and warm air, and not god.
- chubbybubba, on 10/10/2007, -3/+43" Hey, don't blame me.... I didn't sign the contract !" - god
- BohicaTwentyTwo, on 10/10/2007, -4/+32The Katrina floods were not caused by an Act of Man. It was an Act of Man that kept your house from being flooded every other day in the year, but it was an Act of God that washed away your house. Flood Insurance is offered by the government, is cheap and you would think it would be common sense to have for anyone who lives at a sea level that begins with a minus sign.
- jmpeagle, on 10/10/2007, -8/+33I am just wondering why we still allow people to live in that city. Seems irresponsible. I mean look how far under water they are http://www.dvorak.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/neworleansmap.gif
- tehpwnrate, on 10/10/2007, -5/+22It's just a legal term. They use it to describe things like weather, that aren't acts of men. Seriously, I can't believe you guys are complaining about that.
- ryanjulian, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16I live in a flood plain on the east coast of central Florida. It's right there in the contract. Home owners policies don't cover flood. If you live in a flood plane, and you're intelligent, you buy flood insurance. If you don't, it's not a federal judge's job to mitigate your stupidity.
- airwalkery2k, on 10/10/2007, -8/+22In hindsight, it seems logical. But hindsight isn't rebuilding any houses.
- fearlessfx, on 10/10/2007, -4/+18Why are natural disasters classified as 'acts of God' anyway?
Doesn't this kind of thing seem to be more in Satan's department?
I'm sure if insurance contracts were rewritten to include 'Acts of Satan' everyone would be scrambling for the extra coverage. The devil doesn't ***** around. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14In further news, the Netherlands is ceding their territory and everyone is moving out. Apparently it's too irresponsible to live there. Thanks for the memories and the wooden shoes.
- bossyucca, on 10/10/2007, -3/+14The Act of God argument sounds like something the attorney cooked up in an effort to represent his clients.
Homeowners Insurance has NEVER covered flooding, Act of God or otherwise. That is why the National Flood Insurance program was created.
Homeowners insurance has generally covered water damage from things like roof leaks and pipe leaks. This has become more restrictive in recent years depending on where you live. In some states these are covered in all policies, in other states you have to add this as a rider.
Here in Texas, if you live in a 100 year flood plain, no bank will give you a home loan unless you carry National Flood Insurance.
The insurance companies screwed no-one in this case as much as it feels good to say they did.
It is the homeowners fault for not understanding their policy and not buying National Flood Insurance. - rholloway, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Unfortunately, social tragedy doesn't lead to legal accountability. What the submitter failed to mention in his story was that of the petitioners, none of them had insurance to cover water damage. Should be dugg down as inaccurate, but I'll be dugg down for being the bearer of the unfortunate truth.
- Hananda, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11I'll give you that it seems like a really poor idea to live in a bowl between a lake and the ocean, and that rebuilding the city may not be at all cost-efficient, but to disallow people from living there? By that logic, shouldn't we evacuate say, Tornado Ally, most buildings of two or more floors along active fault lines, and other high-risk areas?
I mean, sure, that's government money holding the water back, but I'd say the only thing government at any level would be justified in doing would be to cut funding for the maintenance of the levees, and I'm sure the city government wouldn't do that. - andyparkerson, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11Read the article. The court found that it doesn't matter *why* the city flooded. If they didn't have flood insurance, they weren't covered for flood damage. It's a simple as that.
- TLAKABM, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10I don't know why we even allow people to live at all. It's a terribly dangerous business.
- OUChevelleSS, on 10/10/2007, -2/+111) This is common in all insurance policies. Read the fine print.
2) Only on Digg could a completely man-made insurance policy get the Atheists agitated by a mere term. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Ignore the diggtards, the court was correct in this case. You really shouldnt get paid for coverage you never had in the first place.
- tehpwnrate, on 10/10/2007, -6/+14"Act of God" is a term they use for things like weather. Stop being so overly sensitive.
- virtualmadden, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8I live an hour away from the ocean and around some fairly good size rivers. We don't have flood insurance, because it's almost impossible there would be enough rain or "acts of God". However in the summer of 1948, we lost an entire suburb of the city under water. After seeing some of the pre-flood footage of house locations, I would have seriously considered a little extra coverage if I lived in NO.
- andyparkerson, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10So you advocate bankrupting the insurance companies to benefit those who chose not to buy insurance? With all those companies out of business, when the next hurricane hits, who is going to pay then? Don't blame the insurance companies for not paying claims that the policies never covered. Blame the people for not having flood insurance.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Some of us dont belive in giving free handouts to those who didnt plan ahead. If you cant afford flood insurance, you shouldnt live below sea level.
NO ***** itself over, end of story. - physphd, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Was it weather? Or faulty levees? Willful disregard by ignoring repeated reports of poor levee condition? Neither God nor weather are the primary causes in my mind.
- LegendaryFrog, on 10/10/2007, -3/+10A court ruling that upholds the law (legally binding contracts) !
What is this country coming to? - Jensaarai, on 10/10/2007, -3/+10I wonder why we still *allow* people to live in San Francisco or LA, what with the inevitable earthquakes. I wonder why we still *allow* people to live in forests because of the forest fires, on Hawaii because of volcanoes, in the desert because of fast moving brush fires, on the plains because of tornadoes, anywhere along the Missippi River Valley because hell, that can flood too without a hurricane, just a little rain (It's called a hundred year flood, as in it happens on average at least once every hundred years.) And the same Army Corps of Engineers in charge of levees from New Orleans is in charge of those along the whole river. Why do we let people live in the southeast, with their hurricanes as well?
Really, why do we allow people to live in America at all? - leetdood, on 10/10/2007, -6/+13Which is true, but the insurance companies aren't responsible for people who didn't think ahead. It's plainly not their problem.
- simX, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8P.S. That diagram you linked to has RIDICULOUS vertical exaggeration. From what I can tell on Google Maps, the distance from A to B from the legend in the diagram is about 5.5 miles. That distance is represented by 3.75 inches on the diagram. That means that the 15 feet below sea level (represented by 0.75 inches on the diagram) should ACTUALLY be represented by 0.00004 inches, which would be imperceptible. It's about an 18585x vertical exaggeration.
That's not to say that New Orleans isn't under sea level or that it wouldn't flood if the levees were breached (obviously it did), but let's not get carried away when you say "how far under water" it is. - andyparkerson, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7How vague is the line in your policy that states "THIS POLICY DOES NOT COVER FLOOD DAMAGE"? It is in all caps on the policy, to emphasize that the policy truly does not cover any flood damage. That is what NFIP is for.
- AlphabetPal, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6> our country would rather have a few insurance companies stay in business rather than people get their lives back together.
... and how much money have YOU sent to the unfortunate victims of hurricane Katrina? Although - I admire your generosity... with other people's money. - Prophetfxb, on 10/10/2007, -11/+17Its really sad that something as vague as "Acts of God" still make their way into contracts. Even more surprising is that insurance companies have a list of things they determine to be acts of God.
/moses intervention? - HigherLogic, on 10/10/2007, -4/+9Then why not just say "natural disaster" instead?
- daybreaker, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6They see just as many as New Orleans has.
Katrina was a Cat 4 a few miles out, and a Cat 3 when it hit land. The hurricane did not flood New Orleans. New Orleans was fine after the hurricane passed.
It was the next day when the faulty levees broke that all hell broke loose.
New Orleans was not flooded by a hurricane. It was flooded by shoddy construction, which is what happens when the government looks for the cheapest bid.
So thats why we shouldnt abandon New Orleans. It has nothing to do with hurricanes. It has everything to do with levees. But I guess that's the citizens' fault? Right? We should be getting off our lazy asses and rebuilding the levees ourselves? - DiggsOnlyNeoCon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Gosh, finally some sense in this entire thread... I swear. People love to get upset over things they don't bother to understand.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4They did, thats why they broke.
And we shouldnt allow people to live there because they start crying to be rescued and for bailouts when things happen. Look at how much they are still crying about the rest of the country not rebuilding everything for them? - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -9/+13Prime example of why you don't let liberal democrats run your city. All of them campaign to help the poor and expand the middle class. New Orleans has been in democrat control for decades, the slums stayed slums the poor never advanced to middle-class status and when the hurricane came the poor were so attached to entitlements they couldn't even fend for themselves. For a city with that many people to not have an organized evacuation plan is absolutely absurd.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -4/+8So, um, why the hell can't we sue the various religious groups? After all, its their ***** Gods that do this *****, and gods get their power from their followers,!
- jerbaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4That graphic is very misleading as the horizontal scale is compressed by several orders of magnitude which greatly, and misleadingly, accentuates the vertical scale. It's not like people live in a bowl. If that map was to scale the "depression" would've been a couple pixels deep at most.
- Danjak, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5A flood is a flood is a flood, apparently.
- EarlOfLade, on 10/10/2007, -3/+71. Only in America
2. Because gods are non existing entities and should never appear in contracts. - TimTheGreat, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Allow? Screw that. People can live there if they want. I just don't think they should be shocked when something like Katrina happens. They're allowed to live somewhere else. Granted, a lot of the people are poor and it's difficult to move when you're poor, but New Orleans should probably be best used as a port, not a residential area.
- tybris, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5His whereabouts are unknown.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7If you arnt smart enough to figure out that you might need flood insurance if you live below sea level, then you dont deserve to live indoors.
- whatthefu, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7A contract's a contract. It's just unfortunate that it had to happen to people so deserving of help from their insurance companies.
- fatesdefiance, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4No, the only way they could recover their losses would be to prove that the damage was caused by wind and debris from the hurricane, rather than from the flood damage. As the appeals judges noted, it doesn't matter if the damage was flood water damage due to bad levees breaking or flood water damage due purely to the storm surge--*flood water damage* is not recoverable under their policies. There is separate flood insurance offered--either direct line from the insurance companies (expensive) or underwritten by the Feds through the NFIP. The homeowners affected apparently had neither. The insurance companies are obligated to cover the terms of their contract, but are not liable to pay benefits that weren't agreed upon.
- thugok, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5If you don't know what you are paying for then just maybe you shouldn't be buying it. Or perhaps find someone who does understand it and have them explain it to you. Your stupidity is not my responsibility.
- ICSU, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4The clause is called "Force Majeure" and it includes earthquakes, floods, wars... etc.
- Murphious, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You call your hand "god"?
- Murphious, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3There is a movie with Billy Connelly about just that..
- Gedoron, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I had flood insurance once, as my house a few years back was in what they call the "100 year flood plain" (a few blocks from a river, although it had no flooding for 30+ years) and it wasn't cheap. It was almost as much as my homeowners insurance.
- xatrak, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3No, it was a priest.
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