Early Harvey + Irma Cost Estimate: $290 Billion, Or 1/4 Of All US Disaster Costs 1980-Present

[hatrack]

EDIT

Early estimates of the combined damage from the pair of record-breaking storms could reach $290 billion—nearly a quarter of the total costs of all natural disasters in the United States from 1980 to this year. That doesn't account for the wildfires and extreme heat burning up the American West, or the nine major disasters—including drought and floods—that hit the country from January to July.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) first estimate of the damage from Harvey and Irma will come out in early October—and those numbers will be conservatively low. It will take months and years to tally the total damage.

In recent years, government reports have uniformly projected that costs—both the overall damage and the government's tab—from natural disasters, including hurricanes, will rise. "Climate change is driving sea level rise and more intense hurricanes, amplifying the probability of catastrophic storm damages each year in America's coastal communities and posing a significant fiscal risk for the federal government," said an Obama administration Office of Management and Budget report from 2016.

A CBO report, also from 2016, said that total economic damage from hurricanes alone would be $120 billion higher per year by 2075 than today, and that climate change drives about $80 billion of that.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11092017/hurricanes-irma-harvey-damages-cost-climate-change-global-warming-government-warnings

[Not Ruth]

1. That is what happens when you build on a flood plain