Eastern Alliance Insurance Group Provides Resources, Training for EMHE-Berks Home Build

LANCASTER, Pa. Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Eastern Insurance Holdings, Inc. ("EIHI") (Nasdaq: EIHI) today congratulated the Home Builders Association of Berks County (HBA) and the staff of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" on the successful completion of its Berks County project. EIHI's subsidiary, Eastern Alliance Insurance Group ("Eastern"), is the carrier for the Pennsylvania Builders Association's (PBA) Workers' Compensation Program, and provided safety resources and training for the project's construction crew and volunteers.

"We are proud to offer our construction safety expertise in partnership with the Home Builders Association of Berks County," said Michael Boguski, Chief Operating Officer and President of EIHI. "We are even more pleased that this was a safe and successful home build."

"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" is a popular reality program on ABC-TV that selected Trisha Urban and her young daughter as the recipients of a new house in Tilden Township, near Hamburg. As in other episodes of the Emmy-winning show, the entire project, from demolition to finished construction, interior design, and landscaping, takes place over seven days. The Berks County episode aired on Sunday, October 24, at 8:00 p.m. ET on ABC.

Eastern's Michelle Curley, Manager of Risk Management, and David Morrison, Risk Management Executive, provided safety awareness training to a group of volunteers just prior to the project's start. Those volunteers then used the training to assess job-site safety during the actual construction. Several of Eastern's Risk Management Consultants served as additional onsite safety resources during the process.

More than 2,500 volunteers, led by the HBA, pitched-in to demolish a crumbling house nearly 300 years old, and construct an Old English cottage in its place. Many of the association's members are independent contractors who donated expertise, time and materials towards what the Reading Eagle called 'the house that Berks built." The project was completed in record time with no major injuries.

Eastern was approached to lend its construction safety knowledge through its long-time partnership with the PBA and local affiliates. As the underwriter and service provider for the PBA Workers' Compensation Program, Eastern has provided risk management services to its members for over eleven (11) years.

Information on the PBA Workers' Compensation Program is available at the Program Administrator's Web site: http://www.ekmcconkey.com/pba.htm. Information regarding the Berks County Builders Association is available at http://www.hbaberks.org/.

Founded in 1997, Eastern specializes in providing workers' compensation products and services to businesses and self-insured clients and distributes its products through independent insurance agencies and has services offices in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana and Tennessee. Eastern's Web address is www.eains.com. Eastern is a member of the Eastern Insurance Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: EIHI) family of companies. EIHI's Web address is www.eihi.com.

The Emmy award winning reality program "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," now entering its 8th season, is produced by Endemol USA, a division of Endemol Holding. It's executive-produced by Brady Connell and George Verschoor. David Goldberg is Chairman, Endemol North America. The show airs Sundays from 8:00-9:00 p.m., ET on ABC.

SOURCE Eastern Insurance Holdings, Inc.