One of my clients emailed me on Saturday. She’d recently shopped at a Dallas area Target store to pick up some items for Christmas and had just read the news about the credit card breach at Target stores across the country. She was concerned and wanted to know what to do.
North Texas spent last weekend digging out from the previous week’s ice storm. The sun finally came out and we got above freezing allowing the ice to melt. By the middle of the week, power was restored to most people, schools were in session, people were working, and the roads were clear.
Winter came early to north Texas last week when the rain turned into sleet and the temperatures plummeted 50 degrees from Wednesday’s high of 80. The ice built up on all surfaces including tree limbs and power lines. Some of the power lines snapped and others were ripped from poles when ice laden limbs broke off from trees and fell onto the already strained lines.
Thursday evening the rain and the temperatures fell as an arctic cold front came through Dallas, Fort Worth, and all of north Texas. Wet roads, power lines, trees, and shrubs began to accumulate ice. The ice built up, weighing down tree limbs and power lines causing them to sag. Limbs snapped from the weight of accumulated ice in the early hours of the morning sounding like rifle shots and landing with thumps in yards, on cars, and on rooftops.
A few weeks ago, an insurance broker made the national news. His name is Jerry Goldman and he was the insurance broker for Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson. Goldman pleaded guilty to mail fraud for overcharging Hanks and Wilson hundreds of thousands of dollars in excess premiums. Over a 13 year period, Jerry Goldman inflated premiums as much as 600% and presented phony invoices to hide the overcharges. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay about $840,000 in restitution.
On August 12th, Justin and Kasia Purcell of Surprise, Arizona were away from their home and staying with relatives while awaiting the birth of a child. They received a call that night from a neighbor letting them know their home was on fire. They drove the 45 minutes home after that call and arrived to find firefighters putting out the flames to what had been their home. It was a total loss and no one knows what caused the blaze.
The best kind of home fire is no fire. Preventing a fire is much easier than trying to put one out and dealing with the aftermath it causes, but we’re not always able to do that. Sometimes a fire happens and that’s when detection and containment become critical. Here are two pieces of fire safety equipment every home, condo, and apartment should have.
I was helping a new client with his home insurance earlier this week. I’d made the final modifications to the application and sent it to him to be electronically signed. We reviewed it together by phone and he wanted to ask a couple of questions about a notice on the last page of the application. The notice mentioned he had not received the “best” pricing due to a couple of items that were returned on his insurance score including inquiries.
You’re awakened from a dead sleep by the sound of your smoke alarm going off. In spite of your grogginess, the smell of smoke hits you and you are wide awake. There’s a fire in your apartment or home. Do you know what to do? If you have children, do they know what to do?
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