Avg. Annual Fed Flood Insurance Claims - 1980s-$257 Million; 1990s-$659 million; 2000s-$2.8 Billion
The average claim paid by the federal flood insurance program broke records in 2017 by surpassing $100,000 for the first time, raising new questions about the program's financial viability, according to an E&E News analysis of federal data.
The records also show that property owners in two states — Louisiana and Texas — have collected more than half of the $69 billion in claims paid by the National Flood Insurance Program since 1973. Homeowners in two counties — Orleans Parish in Louisiana and Harris County in Texas — have collected nearly a quarter of the claims. Orleans Parish sustained the brunt of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and Harris County was devastated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
E&E News analyzed 2.4 million payments by the flood insurance program. The records were released last week by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which runs the NFIP, along with information about 50 million insurance policies. The agency plans to disclose more data, which experts hope will help guide decisions about development in flood-prone areas.
The findings come as Congress tries to revise the struggling insurance program.
"This is a really big step," said Anna Weber, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which released its own analysis that shows flood claims "are piling up across the nation, even in areas far from the shore." The newly released data embellishes previously known trends related to the climbing cost of payments from the public flood insurance program. The average annual cost of claims grew from $257 million in the 1980s to $659 million in the 1990s and to $2.8 billion in the 2000s, E&E News found. Those figures involve payments from only the NFIP, the nation's top flood insurer.
EDIT
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/06/19/stories/1060624871
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