How Hurricane Helene could have widespread consequences for homeowners
When Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida on Thursday night, it made landfall in the state’s sparsely populated Big Bend, far from the glittering cities with expensive waterfront property to the south. But that didn’t stop Helene from becoming another multibillion-dollar superstorm.
The hurricane’s massive size and record-breaking storm surge left an equally massive footprint of destruction across the Southeast, from Florida’s Tampa Bay region to Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas. The storm likely caused $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage, as well as an additional $5 billion to $8 billion in lost economic output, Moody’s Analytics said. Although it is too early to know the full extent of the damage, experts said the storm could have major consequences for homeowners, the private insurance industry and the federal flood insurance program.
“In Florida, we have seen so many companies go belly up because of disasters,” said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a consumer advocacy group. As some companies have abandoned the market, new ones have moved in. But Bach said these new players have less experience paying claims and less capital to draw from than the big national carriers. A wave of new insurance claims could send them into bankruptcy.
“None of this is good for anyone: victims, municipalities, FEMA, the market. It’s a huge mess for everyone,” Bach said.
Florida’s insurance market had already been in crisis long before the storm, with many residents still waiting to settle their claims from Hurricane Ian, which struck in 2022. Before Helene hit, some insurance companies had already begun to doubt they could weather Florida’s repeated superstorms. Others had stopped selling new policies in high-risk coastal areas.
These shifts in the industry’s risk tolerance were happening across the country as climate change fueled increasingly severe disasters. [Continue reading…]
Helene’s landfall gives the U.S. a record eight Cat 4 or Cat 5 Atlantic hurricane landfalls in the past eight years (2017-2024), seven of them being continental U.S. landfalls. That’s as many Cat 4 and 5 landfalls as occurred in the prior 57 years. The only comparable beating the U.S. has taken from Category 4 and 5 landfalling hurricanes occurred in the six years from 1945 to 1950, when five Category 4 hurricanes hit South Florida.
With the U.S. taking such a beating from extreme hurricanes in recent years, it’s worth reviewing how climate change is contributing to making hurricanes worse. [Continue reading…]