by dragon » 15 Aug 2012 12:35
Apologies in advance for the length of this post as they are two subjects I'm passionate about insurance and safety.
Declaring of pre-existing illnesses is strict for travel insurance, as I found out this year that my travel insurance had been invalid for the last four or five years. I had been diagnosed with angina, but a year later was told I didn't have it, so I stopped declaring it. Apparently this voided my insurance as I needed to declare this illness even though I didn't have it. I was told though that the diagnosis of angina could have been right and when I was told I didn't have it, this could have been wrong. So there was still a risk.
I was also told that as my insurance would have been void it would have cancelled everyone else's insurance in the group as well. If one person fails to declare something, they void everyone's insurance. Luckily we didn't need to make a claim so now I declare absolutely everything, just in case. It would have been very annoying for me if it was voided as I pay more for my insurance (not the group) than I do for my flight.
Going back to the incidence of the fire, a few years ago we were in the Romance, sat at the front table on the very left as you go in. My granddaughter was a baby and was alongside us sleeping in her pram. A waiter went past us with some dish flaming away, held up high. Don't know quite what happened but something came from the dish, it may have been paper serviettes that were alight and landed in many places on the pram. The hood was up in the pram and we quickly brushed the flames away. He apologised a few times and everything was ok. It was only afterwards when we started thinking about what could have happened, that it really began to sink in. Never were we so thankful that my daughter had such a good pram which saved my granddaughter.
I really think that it's time to end the practice of having all these naked flames in the restaurants especially as you're in the open air and it only takes a gust of wind. Most of the time it's fine at your table (but in the case in Marmaris, why did the waiter have a flammable bottle with him?) but really, is there a need to parade around the restaurant with these meals. In our case the waiter paraded around the restaurant before taking the meal outside to a table on the pavement. We thought that we had taken every precaution by sitting at the front table and positioning the pram away from everything and that she would have been perfectly safe. We were very lucky, even more so that we now know that our insurance would have been void because I hadn't declared the angina, an illness that doctors had told me had been a mis-diagnosis.