Senator Singer on Sandy Storm Insurance Claims and JCPL Failure

hi i think that the the storm sandy storm has certainly created a lot of uh damage to a lot of areas in in the shore region damage to us in lakewood i had a tree fall in my house and i have 35 to 40 000 with the damage seven weeks later i still haven't gotten settled my insurance company i still don't have a check so i'm sitting there with the rest of people except i can still live in my house unfortunate unlike many people that can't i think there has to be better understanding what insurance covers people just don't i don't understand this is a flood this is not covered this isn't covered it never flooded before do i need flood insurance i mean there has to be a better understanding people understand what kind of insurance they should have keep in mind is that flood insurance doesn't doesn't cover contents so even if you had flood insurance it doesn't take care of the computer you lost it doesn't take care of the couch the rugs all the other interior stuff or clothing or anything else you have and start to realize how much money it takes to replace all that i also think that many people that didn't have mortgages were unaware of of what was going to happen and and we have a real travesty this happened i'm sure if you don't if you had a flood insurance it's only 250 000 and even people who had flood insurance are having trouble getting those claims settled partially because of the mag dude we have to be realistic about that but it's also difficult secondly if you didn't have flood insurance the max you're gonna get is thirty one thousand what about the person that has a mortgage has several hundred thousand dollars worth of damage is gonna get thirty one thousand dollars how are they gonna be able to rebuild our big fear we're gonna have people walk away from these homes and then it's gonna take a couple years for the banks to foreclose on what happens how's the town deal with that we have also a big problem headed up about raidables the largest section of raidables in ocean county has been the short community if you take a look at the barrier islands that's where you had the multi-million dollar homes in massachusetts millions and millions of dollars of county revenue radio ratables and revenue came from that what's going to happen it's not going to be there next year so we're into some tough times in ocean monmouth county based on just tax collection that's going to happen in the barra island towns and how that's going to affect all of us in the county and how we're going to have to make that up and that's that's a great concern to all of us and and lastly what we have to do in the future do we have to change building codes do we have to make them better uh than they are right now for the barrier islands we have to say there are areas that should not be rebuilt we have to look at that and and lastly what do we have to do about insurance is helping people understand insurance and make sure they have the proper insurance a lot of unanswered questions a lot of things we have to look at um it's it's also something we have to look at is how the power companies perform and that's something that's been disgraceful uh jcpennel major major problem we heard from from so many companies from outside the state that came in to help that for example in some of the substations the equipment was so antiquated they couldn't fix it that'll replace it that many of the power lines should have been replaced years ago that the tree cutting was inadequate and improper uh no question about it the response from jcpennel locally was terrible mayors and and police departments and and first aid and fire companies could get older so we're going to take a hard look at that there will be legislation to correct that we cannot allow that to happen again i have a piece of legislation in best practice asking the bpu to take a look at all power companies across the country especially those in shore regions and see what best practices adopted adopt that in new jersey require them to replace substations and wires at a certain period of time making sure they better cut trees than they have been in the past making sure that certain areas that should be underground or underground all those kind of things adopt it make sure that every power company in the state has to adopt it and then revisit it every six months to make sure they're doing that having better cooperation when there's a storm between between jcpl or pseg or any of those companies with the local police fire and first aid squads and things can be done better so i think there's a lot of work ahead of us i certainly want to be in the forefront of that um because i am a short legislator because uh many people were seriously affected take a look those of us in lakewood how many how many days we're out with power our downtown whose underground service was out of power for 12 days think about the businesses downtown and people that live downtown how horrific that was um think about the fact that route 9 was knocked out for for almost uh 12 days and how difficult it was crossing the major uh thoroughfare in in our towns and throughout throughout the howell and language which around our district so there's a lot of work ahead of us uh we certainly have just begun but but we certainly have to have accountability and certainly the power companies will be accountable for what happened