Typhoon Haiyan: The Insurance Perspective

Amid the pictures and stories of destruction from Typhoon Haiyan come some facts that put the damage from this storm in perspective, at least in insurance terms. Typhoon Haiyan hit the central Philippines as an extreme Category 5 storm, with winds of 195 miles per hour as well as a massive storm surge on November 8. It then traveled across the South China Sea and made landfall on the north Vietnam coast as a Category 1 storm with 75 mile per hour winds on November 10. Latest media reports put the death toll in the city of Tacloban alone at more than 10,000. While this figure seems high, the Capital Weather Gang blog notes that even if the death toll estimate holds up Haiyan would rank outside the top 35 deadliest tropical cyclones on record.