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COPYRIGHT 2005 Voxant Inc.
Original Source: NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT
PAUL KANGAS, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT ANCHOR: Millions of Floridians are in the same boat tonight without power, water and phones in the wake of a wallop from hurricane Wilma. The damage estimates from the storm are running as high as $10 billion.
JEFF YASTINE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT ANCHOR: And this man is a key player in the nation`s insurance industry now facing huge challenges in the wake of Wilma and Katrina and Rita. We get his take on how insurers are handling this record hurricane season and planning for the next one.
KANGAS: To list or not to list, that is the question facing the nation`s realtors as two big government agencies look for some answers today.
YASTINE: Also tonight, it`s a booming country with soaring needs for energy. We look at India`s voracious appetite for fuel and what it`s doing to find enough oil and gas to face the future.
KANGAS: I`m Paul Kangas.
YASTINE: And I`m Jeff Yastine. Susie Gharib is on assignment. This is NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT for Tuesday, October 25th.
Good evening everyone. South Floridians are dealing with a massive mess left by hurricane Wilma tonight. It`s getting to be a familiar sight, people lining for food, water and fuel as three of Florida`s most populous counties are now in the dark with no power or phones. The recovery is expected to take weeks and cost billions of dollars.
After a record setting season of hurricanes, the latest images are all to familiar, glass-enclosed office high rise towers in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami turned into a checkerboard of broken windows, traffic lights dangling from cables over roadway intersections. Structures like this marina boat storage building crumpled into a mass of twisted steel and aluminum. People are massing too in front of retailers like this Wal-Mart which managed to reopen today. All over the region, relief efforts began in earnest as residents queued up for packages of food, water and ice, simple things taken for granted before the storm, but carrying the highest value now.
MAJOR GENERAL DOUGLAS BURNETT, FLORIDA NATIONAL GUARD: There`s water trucks of food, water and ice and 65 trucks of food on the stateside. It`s about 250 but more is flowing in. That`s what was pre-stored. Our partners FEMA had that here before we got underway. The governor (INAUDIBLE) so it`s here for our citizens, so we`re prepared way ahead of time.
YASTINE: Mindful of the delays seen after hurricane Katrina eight weeks ago, authorities at all levels sought to keep relief efforts on fast forward.
GOV. JEB BUSH (R) FLORIDA: The attitude is that we`ll take a sledge hammer to provide relief and worry about filling out the paperwork later. That`s kind of the attitude we have in Florida and we`re battle tested, so hopefully people will appreciate the kind of response that they`ll see.
YASTINE: The region`s main electric provider, Florida Power & Light, says nearly six million south Floridians are without electricity and the process of restoring power will take weeks.
President Bush will be heading to Florida on Thursday to personally survey the damage caused by hurricane Wilmer, Wilma. The president has already declared Florida a major disaster area with at least 17 counties in the state now eligible for money to reimburse local governments for cleaning up the damage.
KANGAS: Another damage concern, handling the huge insurance claims that will come from Wilma. The industry is already reeling from a record year of storms. For some analysis on the situation, New York correspondent Suzanne Pratt talked with Robert Hartwig from the Insurance Information Institute. She began by asking him to detail Wilma`s total estimated damage.
ROBERT HARTWIG, CHIEF ECONOMIST, INSURANCE INFORMATION INSTITUTE: The damage...
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