The Insurance Council of Texas (ICT) is set to launch its annual “hurricane tour” aimed at reminding coastal residents to be ready in case a hurricane or tropical storm should make landfall this year.
Beginning on Aug. 20, ICT’s Mark Hanna and a team of experts will make media stops in 16 Texas coastal cities traveling from Beaumont to Brownsville in five days. Hanna will join representatives from the Texas Department of Insurance, the National Weather Service and the insurance industry. The team will visit with local media outlets and help educate residents on how they can prepare for the next hurricane.
Although this has been a quiet year for hurricanes, peak of hurricane season in Texas is September 13, and typically, the state’s largest hurricanes have happened after mid-August.
Hanna was in Corpus Christi last year shortly before Hurricane Harvey hit and evacuated along with thousands of other Texans. Upon making landfall Aug. 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey’s winds caused more than $5 billion in insured windstorm losses in the Port Aransas and Rockport area. Harvey then stalled over the Houston and Beaumont areas and caused massive flood damage with record rainfall, including 60 inches of rain in Nederland, and flooding large portions of southeast Texas, including Houston and Harris County.
“The majority of residents whose homes flooded from Hurricane Harvey had no flood insurance,” said Hanna, an ICT spokesperson. “In Harris County, at least half of the flooded homes were outside existing flood plains.”
The National Flood Insurance Program expects $11 billion in insured flood losses. Estimates of uninsured flood losses exceed $100 billion. The insurance industry has paid $3.5 billion in losses for an estimated 250,000 flooded vehicles. Overall, insurers have paid more than $19 billion for Harvey related claims.
The Rockport and coastal bend areas suffered the worst of the wind damage. Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) will pay an estimated $1.6 billion in wind related property losses for coastal residents and businesses. The private insurance market has paid $282 million to TWIA to help pay for those losses.
Source: Insurance Council of Texas (ICT)
Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Texas Flood Hurricane Market
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