Declarations

A Changing Sea

“The world has moved on; the world has changed, and I think possibly in the future we’re going to have to look at forms of security that the maritime industry haven’t been used to in the past.”

—Peter Dobbs, of Catlin Group Limited’s Asset Protection unit, comments on the uptick in instances of piracy and the changing nature of such attacks. The growing threat of Somali pirates, who are not necessarily traditional robbers and raiders but will hold a vessel for more significant funds, signals a need for increased protection for maritime risks.

An Unknown Number

“The reality is we don’t know how many levees are out there.”

—Eric Halpin, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ special assistant for dam and levee safety and vice chairman of the levee safety committee, says the current inventory of the nation’s levees includes only about 10 percent of the likely total. Since Hurricane Katrina swamped the Gulf Coast in 2005, the Corps has spent $56 million developing the initial phase of a national levee inventory as required by Congress. The Corps has released a database with information about nearly 14,000 miles of levees under its jurisdiction but it doesn’t include what is believed to be more than 100,000 additional miles of levees not covered by the Corps’ safety program.

Protection for All

“Day cares having insurance is a good protection for everybody.”

—Oklahoma State Rep. Mike Shelton, D-Oklahoma City, says an exemption in state law that allows some day care operators not to carry liability insurance coverage should be removed. More than 1,500 home-based day care operators and nearly 140 day care centers in the state don’t carry liability insurance because of an exemption included in a law passed three years ago. Day cares are required to carry a minimum of $200,000 of coverage, but the law included an exemption, primarily for day cares operated out of a home and for day care operators who notify parents and others they don’t have liability insurance coverage.