Posted on 26 Jan, 2023

Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in Florida in late September, left a path of devastation in its wake. Over 100 lives were lost, and communities across the state were left with catastrophic flooding damage, from coastal Fort Myers to inland counties such as Orange County, where over 95% of homes are unprotected by flood insurance. After cutting across Florida, Ian made a second landfall on South Carolina, causing more flooding and damage.

The process to aid in the region’s recovery began immediately, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) receiving over 25,000 claims in less than a week after landfall, and supplying over $3.5 million in advance payments to policyholders.

The National Centers for Environmental Information has already declared Hurricane Ian a billion dollar climate disaster. According to estimates from global property data analytics provider CoreLogic and historical data from the nonpartisan data center USAFacts, Hurricane Ian is projected to be among the most expensive flooding incidents, adjusting for inflation, in the history of the NFIP, which was established in 1968.

As a result of their exposure to hurricanes coming from the Gulf of Mexico, Florida and its neighbors on the Gulf Coast are among the states that have sustained the most flooding damage to federally insured properties since 1978, according to the USAFacts report.

As of 2021, Louisiana had registered the most NFIP claims in that time – accounting for almost 20% overall – the majority of which came from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the largest payout in the history of the program by more than a factor of two. Texas, which bore the brunt of catastrophic floods as a result of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, ranks next, followed by Florida.

Over three-quarters of NFIP insurance payouts have been paid out to five states: Louisiana, Texas, Florida, and New Jersey and New York, which suffered profound damage from Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Severe storms mean that these claims and payouts tend to come in large quantities at a time. These five states have amassed $74.6 billion in payouts in over 50 years; Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and Harvey, while not limited to those states, prompted over $42 billion in payouts themselves.

Hurricane Ian marks the 15th weather and climate disaster to reach $1 billion in losses in 2022, joining Hurricane Fiona, which struck Puerto Rico in mid-September, as the most recent climate events to reach that scale, according to the NCEI. The NCEI list includes tropical cyclones like Ian and Fiona, other severe storms and flooding incidents, as well as droughts, freezes, wildfires and winter storms.

Disasters of this magnitude, including flooding-related events, have become increasingly frequent in recent years, according to USAFacts. From 1980 to 2010, the U.S. experienced an average of over five natural disasters each year that reached a billion dollars in cost. From 2011 through last year, the country averaged nearly 15 such disasters, including a record 22 in 2020 and 20 last year. This shift has been largely a result of an increase in severe storms and tropical cyclones.

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