Tropical Storm Debby Already Flooding Citizens with Claims

Tropical Storm Debby has already generated 1,350 claims from Citizens Property Insurance.

And as the storm slowly makes its way across the state, Barry Gilway, the new president of the state-backed insurance provider expects the state will soon be flooded with more.

Clearly youre going to see an acceleration of claims, particularly water-related, said Gilway.

The claims already filed were for water leakage, with about 84 percent from Pasco, Pinellas andHernando counties, which received heavy rains when the storm grew in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday.

With areas of the Big Bend region having since received more than 20 inches, and the storm days away from completing its expected march across the state, Gilway said the claims already filed may be a drop in the bucket.

Debby is slowly weakening, but continues to dump rain across Florida and southern Georgia as it creeps to the east, according to the National Weather Service.

At 11 a.m., the storm --which has spawned tornadoes across the state, resulted in power outages to approximately 29,000 Floridians as of Tuesday morning, and has been credited with the death of a resident in Hillsborough County --was located 70 miles west of Cedar Key.

The storm, with maximum sustained winds down to 40 mph, was moving east at 3 mph.

Warnings remain in place from Mexico Beach in the Big Bend to Englewood south of Sarasota.