The BBCPeople continue. Calculate the cost of lightning. – but one man has been told by his insurers that it wasn’t actually a storm.
Denis Iliffe has been refused a salary because the wind speed in his home town of Kidderminster was not 55mph.
Mr Aliff said he was “absolutely shocked” to learn that the winds that damaged his home were much less than 2mph. Her insurance provider Ejas has been approached for comment.
Association of British Insurers (ABI) confirms that a cyclone is “a period of violent weather defined by a wind speed of at least 48 knots (55 mph)”.
Mr Eliff is £500 out of pocket after the air change and chimney repairs.
On Aegis’ refusal to pay, he said: “They didn’t want to know. They said the gust was only 53 mph and it needed to be 55 mph to be called a tornado.”
Some of Mr Aliff’s neighbors also suffered damage to their properties – with other aerial damage, brickwork damaged, roof tiles blown off, and one of his greenhouse windows blown away.
At least one faced the same problems that Mr. Elif is now facing.
Dennis ElevMr Elif was forced to compare his problem to so-called “acts of God”, which are traditionally defined by insurance providers as events they will not cover.
“You pay the insurance, you think you’re covered,” Mr. Aliff said.
“But when you come to make a claim, they don’t want to pay.”
He acknowledged that insurance providers may be wary of people who use storms as an excuse to make claims on properties that already need repairs.
“But what on earth are you covered for?” he asked. “If you have a fire, does the fire have to be a certain temperature? That beggars belief.”