Insured Damage from Irene Breaches $4.3B
Posted:
Monday, January 30th, 2012
Category:
Insurance Training
Hurricane Irene, the most economically devastating storm to hit the U.S. in decades, and three months since it made landfall, is still doing damage—this time via an upgraded estimate just out this November of insured property damage of $4.3 billion.
Texas and its community of agents with Texas insurance licenses or who’ve had their Texas insurance continuing education had braced early on for a landfall, but Irene ultimately skirted the state.
The new estimate—thanks to Property Claim Services, an insurance industry service that tracks catastrophe losses through confidential insurer surveys and the company’s database of houses nationwide—is nearly 18 percent bigger than the one made back in late September. The insurer surveys compiled results from the field brought in by insurance adjusters (insurance professionals with property and casualty insurance licenses).
Irene cut a swath of destruction from the Carolinas all the way up to New England. The hurricane brought forth at least 855,000 insurance claims, each one costing an average of $5,000. New Jersey and North Carolina sustained the greatest damage, the first suffering an estimated $915 million, the second, about $900 million. In all, 14 states had damages of at least $10 million and eight other states had damages of $100 million at least.
Future hurricanes, say weather experts, are expected to be more destructive than Irene because of abnormal weather patterns. The threat of bigger storms highlights the necessity of more insurance professionals versed in property and casualty insurance adjustment in places under threat by hurricanes—states such as Florida, New Orleans, even Texas and Georgia.
LearnInsurance.com, a vital online resource for insurance professionals seeking the best insurance training, provides insurance licensing classes online, including Texas insurance continuing education, Texas adjusters license online, and Georgia insurance pre-licensing.
