Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. In recent weeks, the
Speaker 1: southeastern United States has been pummeled by two monster storms. First,
Speaker 1: there was Hurricane Helene. The catastrophic aftermath of Hurricane Heline.
Speaker 1: North Carolina was hit with flooding. It hasn't seen in
Speaker 1: a century, so I'm calling it biblical. Millions of people
Speaker 1: are still without power, Whole communities have been flatten.
Speaker 2: Helleen was horrific in a way, much worse than anyone expected.
Speaker 2: There were over two hundred deaths. Of course we're still counting.
Speaker 1: Leslie Kaufman is a reporter with Bloomberg Green who focuses
Speaker 1: on climate and insurance, and she says, by some estimates,
Speaker 1: the damage from Hurricane Helene could cost more than one
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars in just about two weeks after it
Speaker 1: made landfall, a second storm hit the United States, Hurricane Milton,
Speaker 1: with winds up.
Speaker 2: To one hundred and sixty five miles an hour, now
Speaker 2: one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Gulf.
Speaker 1: Those monster gus sending walls of water six to nine
Speaker 1: foot storm serves the National Hurricane Center, so as the
Speaker 1: current path of the storm is a worst case scenario,
Speaker 1: In the end, it wasn't as bad as forecast, but
Speaker 1: according to the latest count, that storm caused at least
Speaker 1: a dozen deaths, flooding, and power outages across Florida.
Speaker 2: Milton did have terrible winds, It did knock out power
Speaker 2: to lots of people. It did go inland and cause
Speaker 2: quite a bit of flooding, and there will be damage
Speaker 2: that comes from not having power.
Speaker 1: In Florida, Georgia and the Carolina's people are just beginning
Speaker 1: to pick up the pieces. The storms have passed and
Speaker 1: many TV reporters have left those areas. But for Leslie,
Speaker 1: who's been tracking the financial impact on millions of Americans,
Speaker 1: this story is just getting started.
Speaker 2: We in the media, and really everyone doesn't spend as
Speaker 2: much time talking about what a hurricane looks like three
Speaker 2: months later, six months later, two years later, five years later.
Speaker 2: The tail of recovery can be very long.
Speaker 1: I'm David Gura, and this is the big take from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News Today. On the show, the growing cost of
Speaker 1: hurricane recovery and how back to back storms have put
Speaker 1: the insurance industry that's meant to shoulder that cost to
Speaker 1: the test. As extreme weather becomes more common in the
Speaker 1: US and around the world. Bloomberg reporter Leslie Kaufman says
Speaker 1: hurricanes and other disasters are costing affected communities more money.
Speaker 2: You know, it's very interesting because I've been watching these
Speaker 2: numbers pretty carefully. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps
Speaker 2: a list of what they call billion dollar disasters, that is,
Speaker 2: disasters that cause over a billion dollar in damage. Those
Speaker 2: things have been rising radically, even adjusted for inflation.
Speaker 1: But Leslie says the share of those damages that's covered
Speaker 1: by insurance hasn't kept up, that.
Speaker 2: Has been steadily shrinking, and that to me is the
Speaker 2: really interesting part, which is who's shouldering it now. Of course,
Speaker 2: the federal government has the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which
Speaker 2: will also come in and give money, but it is
Speaker 2: not nearly enough, at least for most personal cases, to
Speaker 2: cover what is needed.
Speaker 1: FEMA administers the National Flood Insurance Program, which offers flood
Speaker 1: insurance to homeowners who live in areas FEMA has determined
Speaker 1: our high risk. But Leslie says much of the devastation
Speaker 1: from these two storms from Milton and Helene has occurred
Speaker 1: in places that FEMA has not designated as high risk
Speaker 1: and that's bound to be a strain on many homeowners
Speaker 1: who aren't covered.
Speaker 2: The average grant to someone who is not ensured through
Speaker 2: our National Flood Insurance program to fix their home is
Speaker 2: five thousand or under.
Speaker 1: When you look at these two storms and complement and
Speaker 1: the damage from both of them, and think about them
Speaker 1: in the context of the strain that the insurance industry
Speaker 1: is under, our alarm bells ring for you.
Speaker 2: Well, we should be very concerned right now. We already
Speaker 2: know that FEMA is stressed to the max.
Speaker 1: But there's an important distinction that Leslie says is putting
Speaker 1: additional strain on homeowners and the insurance industry the cause
Speaker 1: of the damage.
Speaker 2: This is going to be a tale of two different
Speaker 2: disasters because homeowners insurance in Florida usually will cover wind damage,
Speaker 2: but it will not cover flood damage. So who has
Speaker 2: flood insurance here will matter a lot. And this is
Speaker 2: particularly important for Helene because Helene went up into Georgia
Speaker 2: and North Carolina, and those are places that don't have
Speaker 2: a lot of flood insurance. They have almost none. So
Speaker 2: Helene did real damage. It's going to be a lot
Speaker 2: less insured. The damage from the wind that came from
Speaker 2: Milton also damaging, but much more likely to be insured
Speaker 2: in your homeowner's policy.
Speaker 1: Leslie, do we have data that tell us how many
Speaker 1: people are adequately insured, how many aren't, how many are underinsured?
Speaker 1: Do we have a grip on the kind of contours
Speaker 1: of that story? Yet?
Speaker 2: Oh, we do. Only four percent of America has flood insurance,
Speaker 2: and FEMA is far and away the biggest dominant flood insured.
Speaker 2: Most people don't even know that they don't have flood
Speaker 2: insurance on their regular home policy. But most policies do
Speaker 2: not include flood You would have to get an extra
Speaker 2: policy through the government, and only four percent of Americans
Speaker 2: have one of those. Why most of us don't consider
Speaker 2: flood or real risk, and there's not usually great information
Speaker 2: about whether where you live is in a flood risk zone.
Speaker 2: So even if you wanted to know that you are
Speaker 2: a great risk, it wouldn't be easy to find out.
Speaker 1: Leslie says that until a few years ago, there was
Speaker 1: just one way homeowners could assess their flood risk.
Speaker 2: That basic option was whether or not FEMA designated them
Speaker 2: as being in a severe flood risk zone. If you
Speaker 2: were in one of these areas that they say is
Speaker 2: a severe risk for flood, which means that over the
Speaker 2: course of your thirty year mortgage, there's a one and
Speaker 2: four chance you'll flood over thirty years, or one percent
Speaker 2: chance every year. They demand, or anyone who's giving you
Speaker 2: a mortgage demands that you also get flood insurance through FEMA.
Speaker 1: FEMA made maps of these risk zones, maps that were
Speaker 1: used by homeowners and insurers and urban planners. But a
Speaker 1: big problem is those maps don't entirely cover the kind
Speaker 1: of damage we're seeing from these recent storms like Colleen
Speaker 1: and Milton.
Speaker 2: For one thing, they don't even cover rain flooding. They
Speaker 2: really only cover coastal flooding and riverine flooding, so flooding
Speaker 2: from a rainstorm, which is pretty common in a lot
Speaker 2: of places, those maps don't cover. They were never meant
Speaker 2: to be completely comprehensive, and yet because they were the
Speaker 2: only option, so many people relied on them to build infrastructure,
Speaker 2: towns relied on them for zoning.
Speaker 1: Climate change has made storms more intense and more frequent,
Speaker 1: but according to Leslie, FEMA's maps have not kept up.
Speaker 2: FEMA has been trying to update these for years. Even
Speaker 2: last year they put out a proposal for how to
Speaker 2: update them include climate information. But everything in this nation
Speaker 2: is very partisan and political these days, and frankly, no politician,
Speaker 2: Democrat or Republican really wants to hear that they have
Speaker 2: more flood zones. Why. It means constructions more expensive, it
Speaker 2: means there's more areas you can't build. It means there
Speaker 2: are people who weren't in flood zones who will be
Speaker 2: in flood zones, who have to get flood insurance, who
Speaker 2: will call your office and be furious. So before a disaster,
Speaker 2: no one really wants an expanse of flood zone. It's
Speaker 2: only after disaster that they say, why didn't you tell
Speaker 2: me I should have had flood insurance.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, it's left many homeowners unaware of
Speaker 1: the risks they're facing before storms and unprotected without the
Speaker 1: resources and coverage they need. But there are better predictors
Speaker 1: out there, better tools, and the insurance industry is taking
Speaker 1: notice of them. That's next. After storms like Hurricane Helene
Speaker 1: and Hurricane Milton, it can take years for communities to recover,
Speaker 1: and how that recovery goes depends a lot on insurance. Well.
Speaker 1: For years, homeowners access to disaster insurance has depended on
Speaker 1: maps the Federal Emergency Management Agency has made to predict
Speaker 1: flood risk. A big issue Bloomberg's Leslie Coffman says is
Speaker 1: those maps are out of date. They haven't kept up
Speaker 1: with the realities of modern storms, which has created demand
Speaker 1: for better information about what parts of the country are
Speaker 1: at risk of flooding.
Speaker 2: The result is that we are getting all these companies
Speaker 2: that can predict flooding, we also are getting companies that
Speaker 2: can tell you where there is actual flooding.
Speaker 1: Leslie recently put FEMA's maps to the test. She compared
Speaker 1: them to maps from a startup company called Floodbase that
Speaker 1: used satellite images to show where flooding actually occurred because
Speaker 1: of Hurricane Helen.
Speaker 2: In some cases, it was shocking.
Speaker 1: In the city of Valdosta in southern Georgia, for example,
Speaker 1: Leslie says eighty three percent of the flooding from Helene
Speaker 1: happened outside what FEMA's maps considered to be at high
Speaker 1: risk of flooding. In Tampa, about a third of the
Speaker 1: flooding occurred outside of FEMA's high risk zone. Are insurance
Speaker 1: companies using these new maps by floodbas and other companies,
Speaker 1: and if not, what are the hurdles to them doing that.
Speaker 2: Oh, insurance companies are using these maps, and they're using
Speaker 2: maps actually that are much more sophisticated than what Floodbase has.
Speaker 2: They hire modelers, they pay them a lot of money,
Speaker 2: and they have maps that not only use all of
Speaker 2: previous flooding, but they can look at future flooding. They
Speaker 2: can know a lot of detail about your own personal
Speaker 2: home based on previous claims issues and how your home
Speaker 2: was built. They have quite a lot of information, at
Speaker 2: least the more sophisticated ones, on whether you will flood
Speaker 2: or not.
Speaker 1: But Leslie says this raises other issues. For one, how
Speaker 1: insurers will use that information about flood risk and also
Speaker 1: how it determines who they'll cover.
Speaker 2: The problem is they don't always share that with the public.
Speaker 2: This allows them to cherry pick which houses they will
Speaker 2: ensure and not ensure to some extent, or whether to
Speaker 2: move out of a market entirely.
Speaker 1: According to Leslie, as the risk of natural disasters like floods, hurricanes,
Speaker 1: and wildfires grows, some insurance companies may worry about shouldering
Speaker 1: that additional risk and decide it's not worth it.
Speaker 2: The small regional players probably were terrified by this, and
Speaker 2: they'll probably be a lot of them, especially in places
Speaker 2: that aren't used to flooding like this, will be wiped out.
Speaker 2: So I think what we're seeing across America is what
Speaker 2: we've already seen in Florida in California, which is that
Speaker 2: when you have a series of natural disasters, the small
Speaker 2: insurance players get sort of shaken out of the system
Speaker 2: that leaves bigger ones and if they cannot be allowed
Speaker 2: to charge more money, they will leave the state. It
Speaker 2: changes the leverage, and in most of those places they
Speaker 2: either have to change the regulations that is, allow the
Speaker 2: insurance to charge more, or they have to develop a
Speaker 2: state back program that's essentially subsidized insurance that will take
Speaker 2: people that cannot find private insurance.
Speaker 1: What is a homeowner to do who's worried about where
Speaker 1: things are headed?
Speaker 2: You could check what's in your insurance policy, always a
Speaker 2: good idea, and there now are all sorts of public
Speaker 2: websites where you can check whether you have some risk
Speaker 2: for flood and fire. If you do, you might consider
Speaker 2: taking mitigation efforts. Often you can work with your insurance
Speaker 2: company on this, because just like if you get a
Speaker 2: new roof, they'll lower your premium, they will reward you
Speaker 2: in some cases if you take steps to reduce your risk,
Speaker 2: you could try and move to a place that is
Speaker 2: less in the eye of the storm. The places in
Speaker 2: America that have been growing actually are some of the
Speaker 2: ones that are most climate vulnerable. The woods in California,
Speaker 2: the Florida Coast, the hail belt in Texas and Colorado,
Speaker 2: just to give some examples. We are watching a very
Speaker 2: interesting transformation of the insurance industry. The insurance industry has
Speaker 2: started to realize before the rest of us have really
Speaker 2: grappled with it, how much climate change is changing risk.
Speaker 1: This is the Big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by David Fox. It was edited
Speaker 1: by Aaron Edwards and Amanda Colson Hurley, with special thanks
Speaker 1: to Leonardo Nicoletti. This episode was mixed by Alex Segura.
Speaker 1: It was fact checked by Adriana Tapia. Our senior producer
Speaker 1: is Naomi Shavin. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Nicole Beemster Boor. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's
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Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow.