I'm sure this is not new:
Fires raise fraud suspicions at flooded homes
Saturday, October 29, 2005; Posted: 5:19 p.m. EDT (21:19 GMT)
Dry hydnants allowed fires to go unchecked in New Orleans in early September.
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Manage Alerts | What Is This? NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Some of the New Orleans homes drowned by the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina have been damaged by a second calamity -- fire.
Both Louisiana investigators and insurance companies are starting to look into the blazes amid reports that some may have been set by desperate people who had no flood insurance but want to collect on their policies.
"I can tell you we are aware of those kind of allegations, and we have seen claims where we view the fire as suspicious," said Allstate spokesman Bill Mellander.
"There has been an increase, or spike, in the number of claims in fire losses compared to what we would normally see," said State Farm Insurance spokesman Morris Anderson.
The standard home owner's policy pays only for wind and rain damage, meaning that people without added flooded insurance weren't covered for damage caused by the water that submerged 80 percent of the city for weeks after Katrina.
"The rash of fires is concerning because we have a lot of homes that did not have insurance or had the wrong insurance," said Lt. Allen Carpenter, director of the fraud investigation unit for the Louisiana State Police.
One arrest has been made in suburban Jefferson Parish, said fire department spokesman George Rigamer. A 26-year-old man was charged with setting fire to his parent's damaged house.
"Every fire is investigated," Rigamer said. "If something looks suspicious, if the fire has several points of origin, if there appears to be a propellent, it's going to get extra attention."
The main type of homeowners' fraud that usually turns up after a hurricane is "claim padding," said Frank Scafidi, Director of Public Affairs at the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
"The policy owner has some damage, but during the period following the storm before adjusters get there they enhance it," he explained. "They knock the rest of the fence down, pull off the rest of their shingles.