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Member, Beacon International Group, Ltd.
Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide Corp. late Tuesday said estimated U.S. insured losses from Sandy will be between $7 billion and $15 billion.
Those losses will include damage from Sandy's wind and storm surge to residential, commercial and industrial properties and their contents and to automobiles. It also includes costs associated with interruption of businesses, AIR said in a statement.
The late-season storm ravaged the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions on Monday and Tuesday. It made landfall Monday at 8 p.m. EST five miles southwest of Atlantic City, N.J., AIR said. By Wednesday, the center of the storm is expected to reach Canada.
Sandy caused 38 deaths in the U.S., 17 of them in New York, according to news reports. As of Tuesday afternoon, there were still nearly 7.5 million utility customers without power in 15 states and the District of Columbia.
Sandy's tropical storm-force winds reached 950 miles in diameter, and hurricane-force winds extended 175 miles from the eye. That reach made Sandy the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, in terms of span of tropical storm-force winds, said Tim Doggett, AIR's principal scientist.
"Sandy's diameter was nearly twice the size of other massive hurricanes, including Katrina," whose diameter was 435 miles, Doggett said in a statement.