Hurricane Season Looms Large For Insurance Companies 

Liam Pleven - Wall Sreet Journal - 06-02-2006 

Nearly 70 years ago, a violent hurricane ripped across the south shore of Long Island, then largely farmland. The storm, locally dubbed the Long Island Express, sent 30- to 50-foot waves surging ashore, killing 50 people and 750,000 chickens in the Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk.

Tomorrow, a new hurricane season is set to begin, with the ever-present threat that a mammoth storm could deviate from recent patterns making landfall in the Southeast and follow a path similar to that of the Long Island Express. But where chickens scratched in 1938 now sit some of the most expensive homes in the U.S. As a result, the insurance market here is showing glimmers of the kind of fragility that has plagued places like Florida.

In Long Island and New York City, Allstate Corp. has been dropping customers. MetLife Auto & Home, a division of MetLife Inc., is restricting new policies in the Northeast and other hurricane-prone areas. Premiums are going up as much as 20% to 30%, and hurricane deductibles may follow.