Insurance firms pay out $184 000 after deadly November floods

Insurers have paid out around $184 000 in motor and property claims following last November’s record-breaking floods, which killed one man and caused extensive damage across the island, the General Insurance Association of Barbados (GIAB) said Tuesday.

A total of 60 claims were reported to the association’s secretariat, GIAB president Andrea Walton disclosed.

“For motors, the total reported were 47 motor claims, and properties, the total 13,” Walton told Barbados TODAY. “The two companies that provided how much they paid out were estimated to be $184 000.”

Insurance officials said they do not expect any additional claims to be reported at this stage, considering that the worst-hit areas were limited to some parts of the island.

The record-breaking floods, the worst in a decade, left 58-year-old Terry Kellman dead and caused widespread vehicular destruction, with scores of cars washed away or written off across the island.

Kellman was swept away when he lost his footing along Lower Estate Road as floodwaters turned the nearby Charles Rowe Bridge into a rushing river, witnesses said. His body was found a day after the floods, a short distance away.

General manager of Cooperatives General Insurance, Anton Lovell, suggested that the owners of cars which went under in the flood can expect their vehicles to be written off, regardless of their insurance policy.

“To tell the truth, the vehicles got submerged in water, there is no coming back. I mean, that is a total. Any repairs will have to be treated as a loss. We got a Mercedes that got waterlogged as well,” Lovell told Barbados TODAY days after the flood.

But Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams showered high praise on the first responders who led rescue and recovery operations through the night.

On a tour of flood-hit areas in St Peter and St Lucy the following day alongside emergency officials, he said the scale and speed of the flooding were unlike anything Barbados had previously experienced.

“A lot of the damage occurred in the Charles Rowe Bridge area. I think three or four vehicles washed off the bridge and down the same path that Terry lost his life in that area as well. There were a lot of vehicles submerged,” he said. “There were vehicles that were washed all the way down from St George Parish Church and ended up in the junction by Chefette in Charles Rowe Bridge. We’ve never seen the likes of this before.”

The Barbados Meteorological Services had confirmed that no engineering solution could have prevented the flooding, given the volume of rainfall in such a short period, he said. As much as nine inches (228.6mm) fell in the space of 24 hours in some areas.

According to Abrahams, the Met Office said that “quite frankly, with that amount of rainfall in such a short space of time, the best engineering in the world would not have stopped flooding. The water fell, it fell in the higher parishes, it all rushed downhill, and really all we can do is mitigate it afterwards.”