This hurricane season is expected to be a very active one. National Tropical Weather Conference V photo
In the August cover story of WorkBoat (see page 26), Austin Golding, president and CEO of Golding Barge Line, said, “We’re in a healthy market, but it’s not a peak market. We’ve seen a slow growth into a stronger market based on a number of factors. A strong international market mixed with strong gasoline and diesel demand have been really good to our inland market this year. And we’ve not dealt with low water since December. We’re now in a high-water stage, but we’ve had very healthy water on the river system so far this year.”
That all sounds great until he got to that last sentence.The part about the high water.
At the end of June a high-pressure system packing a heat dome from hell had set up shop from the mid-Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico and a series of storms was running up the west side of it, dumping rain into the nation’s mid-section and swelling Mississippi River tributaries beyond their capacities. And all that water eventually found its way into Ol' Man River himself.
Anyone watching national news broadcasts from June 24 would think the entire Midwest was in danger of going under. From the reports I saw, the great state of Iowa is a loss. Which brings me to the real point of this diatribe — insurance.
It seems as though everything is a natural disaster these days, including most peoples’ homeowners and flood insurance.
Almost three years ago, Hurricane Ida came crashing into my town of Mandeville, La. It came in as a Category 4 storm — yes, stronger than Hurricane Katrina — and wrecked-havoc throughout Mandeville. In my case two 65' oak trees came down, taking out my garage. For the next seven hours, Ida had a grand old time using my house as a punching bag.
Following the storm, insurance companies fled Louisiana like rats from a sinking ship. Those who stayed jacked their prices up to the absurd, claiming that they are being leaned on by the reinsurance companies they use following such disasters.
This year is supposed to be very active for hurricanes. But the storms themselves are less frightening to me than the insurance rates that will follow.
These natural disasters are pushing insurance companies to the brink. Where is the breaking point and how soon are we coming to it?
Ken Hocke has been the senior editor of WorkBoat since 1999. He was the associate editor of WorkBoat from 1997 to 1999. Prior to that, he was the editor of the Daily Shipping Guide, a transportation daily in New Orleans. He has written for other publications including The Times-Picayune. He graduated from Louisiana State University with an arts and sciences degree, with a concentration in English, in 1978.
