Aviva Fried / Photo credit: Benjamin Krain / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP
While fires have ravaged part of the island of Maui in the Hawaiian archipelago, American insurance companies are looking gray. The cost of natural disasters has exploded since the beginning of the year across the Atlantic. Consequence: insurance companies increase their rates, or even choose to no longer cover certain areas.
The progression of the flames will have been spectacular. On the island of Maui in the Hawaiian archipelago, wildfires have destroyed about 80% of the tourist town of Lahaina, helped by strong winds due to the passage of Hurricane Dora a few hundred miles away . While it is time to search for victims in the rubble, the insurance companies are already thinking about the cost of repairs. Billions of additional dollars to disburse, while the bill for climate disasters continues to increase in the United States.
A bill already of 34 billion dollars
American insurance companies have already had to pay out 34 billion dollars in six months. Because since January, storms have followed one another in the United States. Climatic episodes so severe that ten of them each caused more than a billion dollars in damage, more than double the average recorded over the past ten years. The state most affected by these bad weather is Texas. The region was hit by a snowstorm in February, followed by tornadoes in April.
Disasters becoming the norm
This will be followed by terrible June storms which alone cost more than 8 billion dollars. But California and Florida are not left behind and some insurance companies can no longer cope with the influx of claims. They therefore no longer offer their services in these states. The inhabitants find themselves without a solution to insure their house or their car. And for the companies that have stayed, premiums have increased so much that policyholders are sometimes forced to cancel their policies, knowing that the next disaster could occur at any time.
And that should not get better, while climate change is accelerating the rate of bad weather and excessive urbanization favors phenomena such as floods or landslides. So many climatic episodes which, exceptionally, are becoming the norm.