Helene and Milton both likely to be US$50b disasters

Monstrous hurricanes Helene and Milton caused so much complex havoc that damages are still being added up, but government and private experts say they will likely join the infamous ranks of Katrina, Sandy and Harvey as super costly US$50-billion-plus killers.

Making that even more painful is that most of the damage – 95 per cent or more in Helene’s case – was not insured, putting victims in a deeper financial hole.

Storm deaths have been dropping over time, although Helene was an exception. But even adjusted for inflation, damages from intense storms are skyrocketing because people are building in harm’s way, rebuilding costs are rising faster than inflation, and human-caused climate change are making storms stronger and wetter, experts in different fields said.

“Today’s storms, today’s events, are simply vastly different from yesterday’s events. One of the things that we’re seeing is, the energy content that these systems can retain is significantly greater than it used to be,” said John Dickson, president of Aon Edge Insurance Agency, which specialises in flood coverage. “The weather seems to be, in many cases, moving faster than we as a society are able to keep pace with it.”

In the last 45 years, and adjusted for inflation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has counted 396 weather disasters that caused at least US$1 billion in damage. Sixty-three of those were hurricanes or tropical storms.

The US$50-billion mark for direct losses is a threshold that differentiates “truly historic events”, said Adam Smith, the economist and meteorologist who runs the list out of NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information in Helene-hit Asheville, North Carolina.

Only eight hurricanes reached that threshold. Smith said he thought Milton and Helene have “a very good shot” of joining that list.

The first US$50-billion hurricane was Andrew in 1992.