The Extreme Event Solutions group analysts at Verisk, a leading risk-underwriting firm, have estimated that insured industry losses to onshore property for Hurricane Milton, Florida, will range between $30 billion and $50 billion.
Hurricane Milton made landfall on the 9th of October in Sarasota County (Siesta Key) on the east coast of Florida as a Category 3 hurricane, bringing strong winds, heavy rainfall, tornadoes, and storm surges, resulting in loss of lives, damage to property and infrastructure, and power outages.
In the research findings just released by Verisk, the analysts explained that this estimate included projected losses due to wind, privately insured estimates of storm surge, and privately insured precipitation induced flood losses resulting from Milton’s landfall in Florida.
A news report from Reinsurance News, an industry-focused online medium, indicated that the experts, while noting that the majority of the insured loss will be caused by wind, the Extreme Event Solutions group at Verisk, also listed onshore residential, commercial, and industrial properties and automobiles for their building, contents, and time element coverage, as well as the impact of demand surge among the industry insured loss estimates.
According to the report, however, in spite of the storm’s major hurricane status, the highest measured maximum sustained wind over land was 78 mph, or low-end Category 1 strength, in Venice, Florida.
The group also noted that a few locations reported gusts of over 100 mph.
The Verisk group experts said: “It should be noted that there were likely higher sustained winds and wind gusts over land in some locations, especially near Milton’s landfall location, but their either was no instrumentation to measure these winds, or the instrumentation had failed because of power outages.
“The winds resulted in major structural damage near Tampa and St. Petersburg. In downtown Tampa, the roof was ripped off Tropicana Field and a crane was blown over into the Tampa Bay Times office building”, they added.
Analysts believe that with both Hurricanes Helene and Milton impacting Florida back-to-back over such a short time period, this could wind up having some impacts on loss development and settlement for both storms.
It would be recalled that Verisk’s Extreme Event Solutions group recently estimated that Helene’s insured losses could reach about $11 billion, excluding the National Flood Insurance Programme (NFIP).
Available information showed that only Hurricanes Ivan and Jeanne in 2004 hit Florida as major hurricanes over a shorter period than Helene and Milton going all the way back to 1851.
