Hurricane Ike Produces 76,000 Damage Claims So Far

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Thousands of damage claims from Hurricane Ike have been filed with the Texas-backed windstorm insurance association.

The more than 76,000 claims are expected to cost the association billions of dollars. Texas Windstorm Insurance Association general manager Jim Oliver says it will only pay for wind damage, not storm surge damage that it considers to be from flooding.

Oliver says because of that, processors will look at every claim individually and that will make the process slow.

The number of claims filed with the association has been slowing to 700 to 1,000 each weekday. That's down from about 6,000 daily in the two weeks after the September 13th storm that struck Galveston and southeast Texas.

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