Zurich has announced that it is already receiving claims and that it is bracing for many more.
The insurance news from Zurich Insurance Group’s Chinese unit has revealed that it has already started receiving filings with regards to the explosion in the country’s northeast city of Tianjin, and it has added that it is preparing to receive many more.
The blast struck the city in China last Wednesday, killing over 85 people and injuring more than 720.
As rescue workers continued to pull survivors out of the disaster zone, two more smaller explosions rocked the area on Saturday. Evacuation of that entire segment of the city has occurred in order to give emergency workers a better opportunity to safely clean up the chemical contamination. Twenty one firefighters have died in this catastrophe and more remained missing at the time of the writing of this article. At the same time that the city is scrambling to recover its loved ones and clean up hazardous chemicals, the insurance news shows that property and cargo firms are rapidly making their claims.
This initial insurance news was made by Zurich as they rushed to be ready for a great deal more.
The Chinese branch of the Swiss insurance company is already working to conduct an assessment of the potential losses that were faced by the businesses that are located in that part of the city following two initial massive explosions in the industrial port area, and then more that followed this weekend which were smaller than those from Wednesday.
Among the companies that are currently assessing the damage to their facilities include Toyota and Volkswagen, as well as Renault from France. According to Renault, almost 1500 of its imported vehicles were stored within a warehouse close to the port and that they were all burned. Approximately 40 percent of the vehicles that China imports make their way through Tianjin as they head farther into the country.
The insurance news that will be released with regards to this explosion will greatly depend on the investigators that continue to pick their way through the rubble and wreckage in the search for information about what caused the blast. This weekend, the main concern was that there were still chemicals being stored within some of the warehouses that were destroyed in the blast, and that the inventories of those businesses were also ruined, making it much more difficult to try to know what may or may not be adding to the current risks.