A devastating earthquake rocked central Italy early Wednesday, collapsing homes on top of residents as they slept. At least 37 people were killed, most of them in three hard-hit towns where rescue crews raced to dig survivors out of the rubble, but the toll was expected to rise as crews reached homes in more remote hamlets.

Swollen rivers across much of southern Louisiana receded slowly from record levels on Monday while rescue crews searched for people stranded in flooded homes after torrential rains left seven people dead.

Early in my career, I had the opportunity to tour a corporate disaster recovery (DR) center, right in the heart of center city Philadelphia. The facility, housed within a solidly built World War II-era tank factory, had every kind of system available, from IBM and Honeywell mainframes to rooms of PC servers.

More than 340,000 homes in Southwest Florida are at risk of hurricane storm surge, with a potential rebuilding cost topping $65 billion.

West Virginia flood insurance has yet to become commonplace in that market. That is problematic when taking into account the fact that flooding is the fastest growing form of natural disaster.

The tremendous Fort McMurray wildfire that ripped through the region in Alberta, Canada was the costliest in the country’s history. No other disaster brought such great expense to insurance companies.

The General Insurance Association of Japan (GIAJ) reports that claims paid in the wake of the Kumamoto earthquake in mid-April totalled 317 billion yen, or about US$3.1 billion, as of June 20.

West Virginia’s three most devastated counties and possibly others will receive federal assistance after the state’s worst flooding in more than a century killed at least 24 people, officials said on Saturday.

The floods that hit central France and Paris last week have caused hundreds of millions of euros of damage, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. However, the French premier said on Monday the full extent of the damage hasn’t been assessed yet.

Two days after the Fort McMurray wildfire turned Bruce Thompson’s mobile home into a pile of ash and rubble, he called his insurer to report the damage, despondent as he discussed a life’s worth of possessions gone in seconds. The broker made the situation worse.

The massive Fort McMurray wildfire is expected to cost the Canadian insurance industry $4.6 billion, according to data from Property Claim Services (PCS), a Verisk Analytics business.

The sound of pounding rain has become the daily chorus across the state of Texas. Wednesday’s storms targeted north of Houston, where a six-inch downpour in just three hours led to flash flooding, reports CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez.

The first few months of 2016 have ushered in severe weather storms of historical proportions.

The Atlantic Ocean could be gearing up for an active hurricane season, meaning North American residents may want to pay attention. In recent years, single hurricanes have led to thousands of deaths across the Caribbean, North and Central America, and have caused several billion dollars in damage.

A decade without a devastating hurricane has left Florida in the strongest position ever to face the annual storm season that begins in June. The property insurance market is thriving and the state has dramatically decreased the size of Citizens Property Insurance, the state-backed insurer.