Latest Catastrophe Headlines
All the headlines from our Catastrophe Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Earthquake Kills 207 People Injures 11,500 in China’s Sichuan Province
Apr 22 2013 // China’s worst earthquake in three years on Saturday killed at least 207 people and injured 11,500, 960 of them seriously, according to the latest figures available from China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs. The...
Florida Hurricane Cat Fund Reform in Jeopardy
Apr 19 2013 // Plans to reform Florida’s state-backed reinsurance facility with proponents scaling back their proposals. The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund has been the subject of legislative reform efforts for several years as...
Missouri Senate Backs $15M of Aid After Joplin Tornado
Apr 18 2013 // Missouri senators have backed a plan that could provide $15 million to Joplin to rebuild street curbs and gutters damaged as a result of a deadly 2011 tornado. The legislation given initial approval would create a disaster...
Digital Signs to Warn Minn. Drivers About Tornadoes
Apr 18 2013 // Digital billboards in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties will be a new way to warn motorists about tornado warnings. The billboard warnings are a joint venture of the counties, billboard owners ClearChannel Outdoor, and the...
Mississippi’s Tornado-Damaged Businesses Getting Back to Business
Apr 18 2013 // In keeping with the traditional Mississippi never-say-die attitude, many Hattiesburg area business owners affected by the Feb. 10 tornado are getting back on their feet — and back in business. Employees at...
Aon Benfield ILS Report Notes Cat Bond Investor Returns Double
Apr 18 2013 // Aon Benfield Securities Insurance-Linked Securities First Quarter Update 2013 has concluded that “for the annual period ending March 31, investment returns for the Aon Benfield All Bond index had reached 12.69...
Boston Marathon Bomb Victims May Turn to BAA Insurance, Central Fund for Compensation
Apr 17 2013 // Victims of the Boston Marathon bombings will eventually win some kind of compensation, but it is far too early to know how much money there will be, whether private donors or insurers will provide most of it, and how long...
Series of Earthquakes Shakes Central Oklahoma
Apr 17 2013 // The U.S. Geological Survey says several earthquakes have shaken central Oklahoma. USGS geophysicist Jana Pursley says the temblors began about 1:45 a.m. Tuesday and all were centered northeast of Oklahoma City. She says...
Insurance for Sporting Events Could Be Affected by Marathon Bombings: RMS Expert
Apr 17 2013 // Insurance markets for sporting events and terrorism coverage could be affected by the Boston Marathon bombings, according to a risk expert offering one of the first estimates of the impact of the terrorist attack. Dr....
Powerful M7.8 Earthquake Strikes Iran-Pakistan Border: AIR Analysis
Apr 17 2013 // Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide has issued a report on the powerful M7.8 earthquake, which struck a sparsely populated area of southeastern Iran about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the country’s border with...
CCRIF in Pact with Jamaica Government for $100,000 Sandy Disaster Relief
Apr 16 2013 // On Friday April 12, 2013 the Government of Jamaica and the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), formalizing a donation of $100,000 made by CCRIF to the...
‘Sandy’ Officially Retired from List of Atlantic Storm Names
Apr 16 2013 // “Sandy has been retired from the official list of Atlantic Basin tropical cyclone names by the World Meteorological Organization’s hurricane committee because of the extreme impacts it caused from Jamaica and...
FBI Calls Boston Marathon Bombings ‘Potential’ Terrorist Act
Apr 15 2013 // The FBI said the investigation of the explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon is a “criminal investigation that is a potential terrorist investigation.” The FBI, with Special Agent Richard...
Experts: 1953 Indiana Tornado Damage Would Be Worse Today
Apr 11 2013 // A deadly tornado that swept through east central Indiana 60 years ago could cause much more destruction if it swept through today because of suburban sprawl. The April 9, 1953, twister originated in Illinois and ended near...
Alabama Museum Exhibit Recalls 2011 Tornadoes
Apr 11 2013 // An oral history of the tornadoes that devastated Tuscaloosa and the surrounding area on April 27, 2011, will be exhibited later this month at the Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum. The exhibit,...
2013 Hurricane Prediction: 72% Chance on East Coast; 48% for Florida
Apr 10 2013 // The Colorado State University team is predicting an above-average 2013 Atlantic basin hurricane season with 18 named storms and a 72 percent chance one will make landfall somewhere along the entire Eastern seaboard. Nine...
Houma, Louisiana Floodgate to Be Ready for Hurricane Season
Apr 10 2013 // The flow of the Houma Navigation Canal in Louisiana completely stopped recently for the first time in the waterway’s 50-year existence. The door of the Bubba Dove Floodgate was connected and fully closed as part of...
Pension Funds Looking for Higher Yields from Cat Bonds
Apr 9 2013 // Pension funds are turning to specialist bonds that bet on the likelihood of a natural disaster, in a search for yield and returns that are not correlated to the rest of the market. What was once considered an exotic...
Hurricane Center Learns Lesson from Sandy; Changes Warnings
Apr 8 2013 // Responding to criticism after Superstorm Sandy, the National Hurricane Center says it will change the way it warns people about tropical storms that morph into something else. At the height of Sandy, as the hurricane...
Insurance Covered Half of U.S. Disaster Costs in 2012: Swiss Re
Apr 8 2013 // Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters caused $186 billion in economic losses globally in 2012 and took approximately 14,000 lives, according to global insurer Swiss Re’s latest sigma study. The United States...
