Bay County’s Hurricane Michael insurance claims have risen in recent weeks, helping push total losses to more than $4.8 billion in Florida, according to the latest state Office of Insurance Regulation report.

State Farm will continue to use drones in its insurance operations. The insurer was granted a first-of-its-kind national waiver by the Federal Aviation Administration that will allow drone operations over people and flights beyond a pilot’s visual line of sight through November 2022.

German insurance company Munich Re says the Northern California wildfire that killed dozens of people and burned down the town of Paradise was the world’s costliest single natural disaster in 2018.

With the number of claims continuing to increase, estimated insured losses from October’s Hurricane Michael have topped $4.65 billion, according to information posted on the state Office of Insurance Regulation website.

Long before the Camp fire raced through Northern California, claiming at least 86 lives and all but erasing the Gold Rush town of Paradise, state law required the three big power monopolies to file detailed strategies to prevent wildfires.

The risks associated with disasters extend far beyond the initial destruction. For insurers, disaster damage assessment and claims processing can pose both significant financial risk as well as introduce personal risks for claims inspection teams.

Insurance claims from the recent spate of California wildfires, including one ranked as the most deadly and destructive in state history, have topped $9 billion and are expected to grow, the state insurance commissioner reported on Wednesday.

Insurance claims and cleanup costs associated with California wildfires last month are expected to exceed the record-breaking amounts paid out last year after blazes ripped through the state’s wine country.

Total insurance claims for wildfires in the US will likely exceed $10 billion for the second year in a row, according to a new report.

The Camp Fire, which killed at least 88 people in Northern California, was started by faulty steel rings high atop an electric company’s transmission tower which brought dangerous live wires crashing down, a lawsuit claimed on Thursday.

There needs to be a hybrid system of self-regulation in concert with regulatory discipline to handle interprovincial mobility issues for independent adjusters, says the president and CEO of an independent adjusting firm.

Hurricanes Florence and Michael were polar opposites. While Hurricane Florence was a slow-moving flood event with some wind, Hurricane Michael was a fast-moving wind event with some flood. While both were catastrophic in their own ways, Hurricane Michael poses unique challenges for the insurance industry.

As wildfires raged this month in California, insurance claims experts at Travelers sat in a command center 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) away in Connecticut, monitoring screens showing satellite images, photos from airplane flyovers and social media posts describing what was happening on the ground.

In just two weeks, the Camp Fire in Northern California has destroyed more structures than the state's other seven worst wildfires combined. The fire has also killed nearly three times as many people as the Griffith Park Fire - a record that stood for 85 years. And with 870 residents of Paradise and the surrounding area still missing, that total will likely rise.

The bad news is insurance premiums are likely to go up if, as predicted, the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and wildfires increases as a result of climate change.