Hurricane Ida insured losses in US Gulf region estimated at $25B-$35B

Risk Management Services Inc. Tuesday estimated onshore and offshore U.S. insured losses from Hurricane Ida in the Gulf of Mexico region to be between $25 billion and $35 billion.

The Newark California-based catastrophe modeler’s estimate includes wind, storm surge and inland flood losses across Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi but excludes wind and inland flooding impacts in the Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast U.S. regions.

The estimate also includes losses to the National Flood Insurance Program in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi, pegged at $2.3 billion to $4 billion.

RMS estimates insured losses to offshore platforms, rigs and pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico to be between $700 million and $1.5 billion from wind and wave-driven damages.

Loss estimates largely correspond with the ranges issued over the past week.

Losses reflect property damage and business interruption to commercial, residential, automobile, industrial, infrastructure, marine cargo and specie, watercraft, and other specialty lines of business, along with post-event loss amplification and non-modeled sources of loss, RMS said.

RMS expects insured water-related losses to be dominated by commercial and industrial lines and insured wind losses to be driven by residential lines.

Ida was near Category 5 intensity at its landfall and remained at Category 4 intensity for six hours moving inland, noted Mohsen Rahnama, chief risk modeling officer at RMS, in the Tuesday statement.

“Due to major damage to power plants, as well as transmission and distribution lines, the widespread power outage will significantly delay full recovery. Southern Louisiana has a high concentration of petrochemical plants, refineries, marine cargo and port exposures, power plants and other high-value industrial facilities that were impacted by Ida,” Mr. Rahnama said.

Material impacts to specialty lines and material business interruption losses will be likely with prolonged anticipated recovery times as these businesses rely heavily on the state’s power grid.

Hurricane Ida was the ninth named storm of the 2021 North Atlantic hurricane season, the fourth hurricane, and the fifth named storm to make landfall in the U.S. this season, RMS said.