Devastation wreaked upon Florida and South Carolina by Hurricane Ian back in September caused the second-highest insured loss ever seen on reinsurer Swiss Re’s records.
Between $50 and $65 billion worth of insured damages are estimated to have been caused by the powerful Category 4 storm, according to Swiss Re, second only to Hurricane Katrina which ravaged New Orleans back in 2005.
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“Extreme weather events have led to high insured losses in 2022, underpinning a risk on the rise and unfolding on every continent,” Martin Bertogg, head of Catastrophe Perils at Swiss Re, explained.
“Urban development, wealth accumulation in disaster-prone areas, inflation, and climate change are key factors at play, turning extreme weather into ever-rising natural catastrophe losses,” he added.
Other estimates have also estimated multi-billion dollar losses from Hurricane Ian. For example, modeling firm RMS assessed in October that the storm was responsible for between $53 billion to $74 billion, Axios reported.
Worldwide, extreme weather events such as Hurricane Ian, flooding in Australia, and hailstorms in France caused an estimated $115 billion worth of insured losses to date, per the Swiss Re report.
This is the second year in a row that such losses eclipsed $100 billion, which is in keeping with a trend of a 5% to 7% annual uptick in losses spanning the past decade, according to the report. The 10-year average for insured losses is $81 billion, the report said.
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In terms of economic damage, the report concluded extreme weather events caused at least $260 billion worth of woes in 2022, exceeding the $207 billion 10-year average, per the report.
Roughly 144 deaths have been linked to Hurricane Ian.
