News stories in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Irene stressed that the damage wrought by the storm was not as bad as feared.
While we can all be thankful for that, it is also true that thousands of businesses and homes up and down the eastern seaboard sustained physical damage and business interruption losses. Early estimates placed property damage and commercial losses in the neighborhood of $7 billion. Many businesses will therefore be looking to their insurance companies to recover the myriad losses from the storm.