Hurricane Francine packs winds of 100 mph Hit South Louisiana The September 11 earthquake left hundreds of thousands of people without power, but the most dangerous and damaging effect was the storm surge that surged up the coast and flooded coastal parishes such as Terrebonne and Lafourche. Preliminary estimate AccuWeather estimates damage at $9 billion, but that figure is likely to be revised as scientists, insurers and government officials gather more data.
In the days, weeks, and months after a hurricane like Francine makes landfall, many public agencies and insurance companies try to estimate how much damage the disaster will cause. This isn’t just a number on the books. These estimates help state governments prioritize where to send aid and spur insurance claims, helping people and local economies recover more quickly from disasters.
Hurricane damage estimates often vary widely because each estimate is made for its own purpose. For example, a preliminary assessment by the Federal Emergency Management Agency states: Used within 30 days of landing, It also helps officials determine whether a major disaster declaration is necessary and what public assistance programs may be needed in disaster-hit areas.
Early damage estimates can also raise public awareness and increase the amount of aid donated. “We saw this first-hand in 2017 when Harvey hit Texas,” said AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist John Porter. “Many people across the country didn’t understand the extent and severity of the damage and suffering during the storm. Once AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate of total damage and economic losses from Harvey at $190 billion, additional aid and relief poured into Texas from across the country.”
Insurance companies can quickly estimate damages because they already have data on property values. “But really, you need to do careful case studies to get an accurate picture,” says Adam Rose, who studies disaster economics at the University of Southern California. “Typically, case studies aren’t completed for a year or two, but it’s useful to have a rough estimate in advance.”
AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate tallies a range of costs, including damage to property and infrastructure, job losses and lost wages, airport closures, etc. “Our estimates also take into account the costs of evacuations and temporary relocations, as well as longer-term impacts to transportation, tourism and business logistics,” Porter said.
Tallying up how much disasters cost is important because, in the long run, it tells people the economic importance of disasters and is an indicator of progress in recovering from such events. One of the most frequently cited sources on a national scale is the Multi-billion dollar weather and climate disasters The dataset, a monthly report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information, tracks U.S. disasters that exceed the $1 billion threshold, combining official federal and state government statistics with private sector data such as insurance claims, said Adam Smith, an applied climatologist at the agency who leads the dataset.
This billion-dollar damage figure includes losses from numerous extreme weather events, including hurricanes, severe storms, tornadoes, floods, winter storms, wildfires, droughts, heat waves, etc. However, this number does not include all monetary losses, only what NOAA considers to be “total direct losses.”
Their definition of direct total loss spans 16 different categories, including homes, vehicles, businesses, government buildings (and anything inside them), business interruption, and loss of living space due to the absence of housing while repairs or reconstruction take place. The assessment also incorporates damage to roads, bridges, tax systems, power grids, and crops. As Smith explains, it’s a “comprehensive, yet conservative, estimate of what was actually lost.”
The Gulf Coast is sinking, making hurricanes like Francine even more dangerous
Smith said there’s still a lot that insurance doesn’t cover, such as health-related expenses that arise from a disaster and environmental damage that can occur when a hurricane strikes.
Not only do the estimates in the multi-billion dollar datasets not take into account the physical medical costs, they also do not take into account the mental health crises that linger in the aftermath of natural disasters. Then there are the natural issues: for example, hurricane damage to coral reefs and mangrove forests that are well established natural buffers against storm surges, effectively reducing the resilience of the area to future storms. These associated costs are also not considered in the multi-billion dollar disaster damage assessments.
Because it doesn’t take into account all these consequences, as well as other costs that tend to arise after disasters, such as supply chain interruptions, the dataset captures only a portion of the total cost of catastrophes and provides only a snapshot of what losses will look like as a warming world makes disasters more frequent and severe.
And when things like the toll on mental and physical health are not taken into account, this can exclude those who tend to lose most in disasters, leading to questions about what can be done to alleviate their historic burden.
“If we’re just focusing on the economic losses, disaster losses are tolerable, right? In the U.S., economies tend to see GDP increases after disasters,” says Andrew Rumback, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “But that doesn’t mean disasters are a good thing.”
When a storm strikes, it can knock out power and water, destroy bridges and roads, and make it difficult or impossible for businesses to resume operations. These are widespread forms of economic loss. If a hurricane strikes New Orleans and reduces economic productivity in Louisiana for several years afterward, determining how much of an impact the storm itself had, and in any event how much of a loss in productivity it would take extensive calculations.
Due to the nature of hurricanes, economic damage can extend far beyond the coastline they directly strike: Atlantic hurricanes form at sea, use warm ocean waters for fuel, and can hit ports on the Gulf Coast or East Coast, as Hurricane Katrina did. $1.7 billion in damages Even if Louisiana’s ports aren’t affected, it could have economic ripple effects. Shut down as a precaution When a storm approaches, goods may not get to where they need to be on time, which increases costs.
So in the long run, economic losses from hurricanes often end up being much higher than initially estimated. But that first rough calculation is crucial to avoid even bigger losses later. “Getting insurers to pay premiums sooner and getting government assistance to roll out sooner and more effectively can help recovery and reduce business interruption losses,” Rose said.
When we talk about disaster damage, it’s mostly in business and economic terms, accentuated by huge dollar signs. But there’s a risk in placing too much emphasis on price, Rumbach warns. That risk has to do with the way disasters expose and exacerbate existing social disparities: “There’s a big question we should always ask: Is monetary value the right measure?”
In Rumback’s view, a hurricane could destroy one mansion and 12 less expensive mobile homes. After scrutiny by governments and insurance companies, the damage to the mansion and the overall damage to the mobile homes may ultimately be comparable, but the impacts would not be on the same scale.
“When we focus too much on the economic numbers, we run the risk of underestimating the impact of disasters on vulnerable groups,” Rumbach says. “All the costs of disasters go down. Their income goes down. Their home values ​​go down. They spend less on infrastructure. So does the fact that disasters are less important mean that they’re less important?”
