Insured losses top $300M so far
Downtown Pensacola flooding at the height of Hurricane Sally, September 16, 2020
As damage estimates are tallied from Friday’s Hurricane Delta, our thoughts and prayers are with those in Louisiana and Mississippi who were caught in the storm’s path – the ninth named Atlantic storm to make landfall in the U.S. this hurricane season. Florida’s western Panhandle area received some rain from Delta, the same area that suffered up to 30 inches of rain from Hurricane Sally three weeks earlier.
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) reports that 56,852 claims were filed in the first nine days following Sally’s September 16th landfall, for an estimated insured loss of $300.7 million. OIR notes 11.2% of the claims were closed, with a 3-2 ratio of paid vs. unpaid closed claims. The total includes 126 private flood insurance claims, but not the likely much greater number of National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims. AIR Worldwide estimates total multi-state damages from Sally from $1 billion to $3 billion. Some analysts expect the bulk of damage will be flooding and thus absorbed by the NFIP for the minority of claims that have flood coverage. The Cat 2 storm brought winds of 105 mph and upwards of 7 feet of storm surge in coastal Escambia County (Pensacola) and adjacent Baldwin County, Alabama.
Lori Lewis, US Geological Survey hydrologic technician, verifies the readings of a USGS streamgage located on Bayou Marcus in Pensacola, Florida, following Hurricane Sally, September 17, 2020. Courtesy, Rob Clendening, USGS
A recent article by E&E News notes that nearly 250,000 properties in areas impacted by Hurricane Sally were not listed in FEMA high-risk flood zones yet would be considered so under a new private modeling tool made public this past summer by the First Street Foundation that we’ve reported on. In Santa Rosa County, Florida, FEMA lists 10,900 properties in such a flood zone, but First Street found 17,100 properties face a significant flood risk.
Pensacola and other local governments in the western Panhandle have been working with the State Division of Emergency Management for several weeks to help FEMA in its assessments of flooded neighborhoods – some outside of flood zones – to make the case for individual assistance grants for homeowners without flood insurance. FEMA has now approved those grants for Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton and Bay County residents. FEMA previously approved public assistance grants for local governments for their emergency protective measures, as we reported in the last newsletter.
LMA Newsletter of 10-12-20
