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.
Yet another hurricane season has left a broad swath of America’s coast in recovery mode following a once-in-a-generation storm, and wildfires are devastating California. The disasters remind the rest of us how fortunate we are to be safe.
Claims for damage from Hurricane Irma in Florida have now topped $11 billion. More than 1 million Florida property owners have filed claims for insured losses from Irma, according to the latest report from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.
Risk modeling firm RMS said on Monday that it estimated insured losses from the Camp and Woolsey wildfires, which ravaged California, between $9 billion and $13 billion.
Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones issued an emergency notice Thursday to help expedite claims filed by victims recovering their properties from the California wildfires.
One huge fire was caused by a spark set off by a man with a hammer, working on a fence post in a field of dry vegetation. Another began at a backyard barbecue. A 2007 fire on Santa Catalina Island was ignited by workers cutting metal wires with a torch.
The current outbreak of wildfire activity in California is now the most destructive on record and joint deadliest, with the Camp Fire now having destroyed more than 6,700 structures, while the Woolsey Fire has expanded further and as a result multi-billion dollar losses are to be expected for insurance, reinsurance and ILS market interests.
Gage Wilson and David Segal, technicians for the U.S. Geological Survey, were roaming the obliterated city of Mexico Beach when they spotted the missing sensor. It was a barometer that USGS employees had deployed in advance of Hurricane Michael, a pressure gauge housed inside a two-inch-diameter aluminum tube. The employees had noted the specific spot where it was to measure the storm: “Barometer located on second light post from Highway 98 in pier parking lot.” But there was no more light post after Michael destroyed just about everything here with a massive storm surge and intense winds when it made landfall Oct. 10. The USGS desperately needed that sensor to make an accurate estimate of the storm surge that barreled through Mexico Beach.
As billion-dollar hurricanes pummel the coasts, insurance carriers are facing a category 5 operations challenge: a snowballing claims-intake challenge. When hurricane season began this year, carriers were still sorting out claims from 2017’s mega-storms, Harvey, Irma and Maria. Then Florence and Michael hit, adding to the backlog.
The tally of insurance claims paid after recent hurricane Michael’s impacts on Florida has increased by almost 28% in a week to reach $2.6 billion, according to the latest data from the regulator for the state.
The state now estimates that Hurricane Florence did nearly $17 billion in damage to homes, businesses, farms and governments in North Carolina, and that as much as half of that may not be covered by private insurance or government aid.
Insurers have become the front line of the unpredictability linked with the Earth’s rapid warming. Insurance industry calculations are being forced to change as a result of the impact of climate change on the risks facing multiple sectors.
