$4M in tornado claims

Press, 19 February 1983, Page 3

$4M in tornado claims

Victims of the freak tornado which devastated Halswell last month have lodged claims with their insurance companies for almost $4 million. The executive director of the Insurance Council in Wellington. Mr T. A. Roberts, said yesterday that more than 2000 claims had been received by its members and that they were not all in yet. A number of the claims lodged had been for more than $40,000, he said, and that did not include crop damage or claims to the Earthquake and War Damage Commission. "However, it palls a bit when you consider the problems that people in Australia are having.” Mr Roberts said. The secretary of the Commission, Mr D. J. Pritchard, said that it had had 442 damage claims and that they were still coming in “fairly freely." The commission would accept claims until Monday, he said. It required that they be lodged within 30 days of the damage. He said that it was too early to assess the total value of claims lodged. It would be at least four weeks until all the costs had been counted. Most of the claims received had been for damage to vehicles.