#19: High winds and insurance companies Passionate about Cars

In today's show Steve communicates the sad news that insurance companies prefer to use innaccurate methods to determine the severity of a weather event resulting in a claim.


Andy: Hello everyone Irsquo;m with Steve Kennard on a very crisp November morning. Morning Steve.

Steve: Yeh. Morning, Andrew.

Andy: When I first arrived Steve was on the phone - he was having a very long phone call. Do you want to tell us what it was all about?

Steve: Um. Yeh. Insurance companies. Almost an hour, talking to an insurance company regarding the storm force winds we had at the beginning of November. We had a little bit of damage done to the garage roofhellip;

Andy: Irsquo;m just looking now therersquo;s some broken panes and stuff arenrsquo;t there.

Steve: Yeh. The garage roof has got some large glass panes in it - therersquo;s quite a number of them. It is a large roof. In previous lives this was a bus garage.

Andy: Ah. OK.

Steve: It dates back probably to the early part of the last century - it was Tillings bus garage actually where they had the first electric busses in Brighton - and this was one of the depots. The busses used to pull in here - change over the batteries - these huge sort of 1 or 3 tons - these huge battery packs - change them over on the busses and then theyrsquo;d be back out on the street again. So these were the very early electric vehicles that used to run around Brighton back at the beginning of the nineteen hundreds.

Andy: And thatrsquo;s a topic for another show - electric vehicles - we must talk about that - but lets back to your roof.

Steve: Yeh - OK. Anyway this roof structure. There are dozens - close to hundreds of glass panels in the roof - large roof structure. Itrsquo;s a very tall building, an open building, and Montague Place here is very windy.

Andy: Because of the flats.

Steve: The block of flats opposite are 16 - 18 floors or something. So we get this vortex - I think wersquo;ve mentioned it before in previous shows - this vortex effect runs up the center of the street. Back in the early part of November - everybody will remember - we had strong winds for about a week. One particular day the wind speeds were extremely strong - I donrsquo;t know what they were because wersquo;ve got no way of recording them. They were strong enough to knock me off my feet, I got out of a car and the wind actually knocked me over - quite strong. Insurance companies say, nowadays, in order for it to be classed as a storm force or a storm event, it has to be a memorable event - and as a pointed out to them anyone who sustained damage - thatrsquo;s memorable. Yoursquo;ll remember if yoursquo;ve had damage caused by the weather - thatrsquo;s a memorable event.

Andy: And you got blown off your feet which was memorable as well.

Steve: I got blown off my feet, I did. But we also sustained damage in the garage here, we had a couple of the roof panels got lifted up, because theyrsquo;re glass it actually broke. A section of one of the panels fell out. Fortunately itrsquo;s in a corner of the building, nobody underneath it - had there been anyone underneath it, I hate to think what would have happened.

Andy: Did it happen during the day or night, Steve?

Steve: During the day. We were in here working at the time. We had to have the - again itrsquo;s a large entrance to the garage - every time we were opening the doors it was allowing the wind to come in, the garage was rattling - real strong, storm force winds. I would say they were almost hurricane force - but of course, ask Michael Fish and we donrsquo;t get hurricanes in this country. Anyway we had to open the doors to let cars in and out - as soon as cars were in or out, close the doors back up again - try and reduce the amount of wind that we get into the building. As we opened the doors to let a car in, a gust of wind came in, lifted these roof panels, broke the glass, and we had the damage. I thought another job for the ins...