Disaster

When the nation’s No. 1 and No. 4 property and casualty insurance companies – State Farm and Allstate – confirmed that they would stop issuing new home insurance policies in California, it may have been a shock but shouldn’t have been a surprise. It’s a trend Florida and other hurricane- and flood-prone states know well. Insurers have been retreating from high-risk, high-loss markets for years after catastrophic events. Hurricane Andrew’s unprecedented US$16 billion in insured losses across Florida in 1992 set off alarm bells. Multibillion-dollar disasters since then have left several insurers insolvent and pushed many others to reevaluate what they’re willing to insure. I co-direct the Center for Emergency Management and Homeland Security at Arizona State University, where I study disaster losses and manage the Spatial Hazard Events and Losses database (SHELDUS). As losses from natural hazards steadily increase, research shows it’...

U.S. weather disasters are getting costlier as more people move into vulnerable areas and climate change raises the risks of extreme heat and rainfall, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials warned as they released their annual billion-dollar disasters report on Jan. 10, 2023. Even with an average hurricane season, 2022 had the third-highest number of billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. since 1980. In all, there were 18 disasters that each caused more than US$1 billion in damage in the U.S. The list included three hurricanes, two tornado outbreaks, a destructive fire season, several extreme storms and a drought that disrupted sectors across the economy. 2022 had 18 disasters that exceeded $1 billion each in damage. NCEI/NOAA It was also the third-costliest year, with past years adjusted for inflation, due primarily to Hurricane Ian’s widespread damage in Florida. Together,...

Rivers of muddy water from heavy rainfall raced through city streets as thousands of people evacuated homes downhill from California’s wildfire burn scars amid atmospheric river storms drenching the state in early January 2023. The evacuations at one point included all of Montecito, home to around 8,000 people – and the site of the state’s deadliest mudslide on record exactly five years earlier. Wildfire burn scars are particularly risky because wildfires strip away vegetation and make the soil hydrophobic – meaning it is less able to absorb water. A downpour on these vulnerable landscapes can quickly erode the ground, and fast-moving water can carry the debris, rocks and mud with it. After the 2018 mudslide in Montecito, firefighters checked homes. Twenty-three people died in the disaster. Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images With more storms expected through mid...

Back-to-back hurricanes left an unnerving scene on the Florida coast in November 2022: Several houses, and even swimming pools, were left dangling over the ocean as waves eroded the property beneath them. Dozens of homes and condo buildings in the Daytona Beach area were deemed unsafe. The destruction has raised a disturbing question: How much property along the rest of the Florida coast is at risk of collapse, and can it be saved? As the director of iAdapt, the International Center for Adaptation Planning and Design at the University of Florida, I have been studying climate adaptation issues for the last two decades to help answer these questions. Drone footage shows homes close to collapsing into the ocean. WPLG/YouTube. Rising seas, aging buildings Living by the sea has a strong appeal in Florida – beautiful beaches, ocean views, and often pleasant breezes. However, there are also risks, and they are exacerbated by climate chang...

The world could still, theoretically, meet its goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, a level many scientists consider a dangerous threshold. Realistically, that’s unlikely to happen. Part of the problem was evident at COP27, the United Nations climate conference in Egypt. While nations’ climate negotiators were successfully fighting to “keep 1.5 alive” as the global goal in the official agreement, reached Nov. 20, 2022, some of their countries were negotiating new fossil fuel deals, driven in part by the global energy crisis. Any expansion of fossil fuels – the primary driver of climate change – makes keeping warming under 1.5 C (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times much harder. Attempts at the climate talks to get all countries to agree to phase out coal, oil, natural gas and all fossil fuel subsidies failed. And countries have done little to strengthen their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the...