Anticipated Consequences

CNN has a bunch of interesting headlines tonite, but two stand out because they remind me of postings made quite a while back.

CNN Article I:
Report: Added armor causing Humvees to roll
Uparmored Humvees became a major issue when insurgents grew increasingly reliant on IEDs to attack US armed forces in Iraq. At the time, there was a good counterargument to up armoring - namely that the Humvees weren't designed for the heavy armor packages, that it would increase wear and tear, and that when under fire, speed is life - and the armor packages reduce the speed at which those Humvees can travel.

Well, it turns out that the up armor packages don't come without a heavy price.

Thousands of pounds of armor added to military Humvees, intended to protect U.S. troops, have made the vehicles more likely to roll over, killing and injuring soldiers in Iraq, a newspaper reported.

"I believe the up-armoring has caused more deaths than it has saved," said Scott Badenoch, a former Delphi Corp. vehicle dynamics expert told the Dayton Daily News for Sunday editions.

Since the start of the war, Congress and the Army have spent tens of millions of dollars on armor for the Humvee fleet in Iraq, the newspaper reported Sunday.

That armor -- much of it installed on the M1114 Humvee built at the Armor Holdings Inc. plant north of Cincinnati, Ohio -- has shielded soldiers from harm.

But serious accidents involving the M1114 have increased as the war has progressed, and the accidents were much more likely to be rollovers than those of other Humvee models, the newspaper reported.

An analysis of the Army's ground accident database, which includes records from March 2003 through November 2005, found that 60 of the 85 soldiers who died in Humvee accidents in Iraq -- or 70 percent -- were killed when the vehicle rolled, the newspaper reported. Of the 337 injuries, 149 occurred in rollovers.

There's a reason that the Humvees were not built with armor packages - they were never designed for armored combat operations and the added weight degrades the performance of the Humvees in certain combat situations - namely getting out of harms way. The military now has to adjust its operating procedures to deal with this situation and lessen the likelyhood that drivers will flip their Humvees, killing or injuring themselves or their crewmates.

Article II:
Owners find insurance won't rebuild homes

Behind the sign he hung from his porch is a story all-too-common in this once-posh neighborhood of pummeled homes: Even New Orleans' affluent homeowners, who thought they had done the right thing by properly insuring their investment, are finding that technicalities are keeping them from securing enough from their insurers to rebuild.

The insurance industry says it has settled more than 90 percent of its Hurricane Katrina claims, proving it's meeting its obligations to policyholders. But consumer advocates say insurers settled numerous claims for only a fraction of the actual damages, using numerous exclusions to reduce payouts. Insurance modeling firm ISO estimates Louisiana had $24.3 billion in insured losses, but the state Department of Insurance says only $12.5 billion had been paid out as of the end of April, the last month for which figures were available.

Without enough money from their insurers to rebuild, homeowners are left with two choices: Give up and leave, or else rebuild by hand, using their savings to pay for labor and materials.

This is the scenario I wrote about just days after Katrina came ashore. Lawsuits will end up deciding what gets rebuilt in many areas and insurance companies will be reluctant to pay claims. People will not get enough money to cover their damages, leaving them to decide whether to stay and attempt to rebuild or go elsewhere.