Insurers moving in

Already they're serving pancakes at Qualcomm Stadium and buying air time on KNX. The message is we're here for you, which of course is what you want to hear if you're desperately worried about losing home. And to some degree it's true. But attorney Michael Raibman of insurance recovery group Reed Smith puts it this way: "Insurers are in the business of collecting premiums and denying claims. As supportive as they may be in times of disaster, stay on guard. Assume they will do everything they can to disclaim coverage." Just one example is coverage for living expenses. Allstate, Farmers, AAA, USAA and some other insurers provide customers with housing-expense funds during a mandatory evacuation, but others cover those expenses only if their customers' homes have been destroyed or seriously damaged (which folks have no way of knowing if they’ve been evacuated). Here's more from the San Diego Union-Tribune:

A small army of claims adjusters was deployed throughout San Diego County yesterday, as wildfires raged from Poway to Chula Vista. Insurers set up information booths in evacuation centers, mobilized employees and dispatched mobile command vehicles – essentially large RVs or trailers equipped with state-of-the-art communications and computer equipment – to deal with the wildfires. “We're viewing our plans with the same logistical planning that would go into a military invasion: getting the right people into the right places in the safest way possible,” said Bill Sirola, a spokesman for State Farm Insurance.

By the way, our pal Herb Greenberg is still camped out at the DoubleTree in Anaheim. He and his wife left their home in Del Mar Heights on Monday and he’s been keeping a blog on MarketWatch.

I now realize that during much of yesterday my wife and I (and probably about 250,000 other people) were in a state of denial and shock. Denial is why we left certain things home and why I took ridiculously few cloths; surely we would be back. Shock to the point that neither of us can remember the time we left the house or when we got to the hotel. We were, in retrospect, sleepwalking.