Karen Clark puts insured losses from Debby at $1.4 billion

Hurricane Debby caused nearly $1.4 billion in privately insured losses as it moved up the East Coast this month. That’s about half the losses from Hurricane Idalia, a stronger storm that followed a similar path nearly a year ago.

Karen Clark & ​​Co., a catastrophe modeling and analysis firm, said its estimates show $845 million in wind damage from Debby, which first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane in the Big Bend area from Florida. Storm surges caused about $130 million and inland flooding resulted in $440 million in losses.

“Debby’s slow forward motion allowed the storm to produce significant rainfall along its path, leading to widespread inland flooding along the East Coast,” the KCC report said. “Precipitation totals in the Southeast exceeded a foot in some areas of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.”

The KCC estimate appears to be slightly lower than that provided this week by the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit that uses computer modeling and loss data to assess risk from climate change and storms. First Street estimated overall East Coast damage from Debby at $9.5 billion to $15.8 billion, mostly from flooding. But more than 70 percent of the claims are likely to be uninsured, First Street concluded.

The Florida Bureau of Insurance Regulation reported that Florida insurer data shows that as of Thursday, Aug. 14, Debby’s claims had produced an estimated $114 million in total losses in Florida, a number likely to rise as more claims are filed . A total of 15,326 claims had been submitted by Thursday – of which just 165 were for private flood insurance.

By comparison, Hurricane Michael, a stronger storm that hit the Florida Panhandle in 2018, caused more than $9 billion in insured losses in Florida from about 159,000 claims, OIR reported.

Karen Clark & ​​Co. said that Debby caused less damage than Idalia did, partly because Debby’s storm surge was not as deep.

“The storm surge reached 6 feet in Cedar Key, Florida and 4 feet in locations in Tampa Bay,” the KCC report noted. “Coastal flooding was reported in the towns of Crystal River and Horseshoe Beach, but flood waters were not as extensive or deep as those from Hurricane Idalia last year and caused only minor damage. Debby’s second landfall along the South Carolina coast resulted in a 1- to 2-foot storm surge.”

Last year, KCC estimated Idalia’s total insured losses to be about $2.2 billion.

Photo: A middle school in Wilson County, North Carolina, after being hit by a tornado spawned by Tropical Storm Debby. (Christopher Long/The Wilson Times via AP)

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