Philip Cook may be asking property insurers to offer catastrophic coverage, but it is doubtful he could have predicted the coverage needed in the event of a ‘catnado.’
Severe weather in the U.K. last weekend left 13,000 people without power and many areas of Kent and Sussex flooded with water – but it also produced what some were calling a ‘catnado.’
“We've got four feral cats in the yard and they were being lifted off the ground - about six feet off the ground,” Shirley Blay, who witnessed the event, told BBC Surrey. “They just went round like a big paper bag.”
Blay, who was at a horse stable when the storm hit, also recounted seeing stable roofs shaking and an entire shed lift off the ground.
Fortunately, no people or animals were injured by the high winds, but many Southern U.K. residents were still shaken by the powerful storm.
“It was like something out of a Steven Spielberg film,” said a spokesman from Valgrays Animal Rescue in Warlingham to the BBC. “The sky went black, hailstones the size of 50-pence pieces hammered down on the ground, bouncing back off the ground so high.” (continued.)
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Cook, the CEO of Omega insurance Holdings, had urged property insurers to consider offering catastrophic coverage for policyholders to address the lack of overland flood coverage in Canada as part of his morning speech at the National Club in Toronto last week.
“Everyone faces a catastrophic exposure of some sort or another,” Cook told Insurance Business. “And it is obviously happening more frequently.”
