1 month ago
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The latest data reported by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) states that across hurricanes Debby, Helene and the most recent Milton, more than 72,000 National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims have been filed so far.
One month after hurricane Helene, FEMA reported that more than 54,000 claims had been filed by NFIP policyholders for that specific storm.
It was a particularly high level of NFIP claims for any major flood event caused by a named tropical storm, as for comparison FEMA had made 47,000 claims payments for 2022’s hurricane Ian, an event that resulted in over $4.5 billion in losses to the NFIP.
However, that figure of 54,000 NFIP claims for Helene was across the entire footprint of the storm’s flood impacts, which had extended through multiple states from its landfall in Florida right up to the devastating flooding experienced in western North Carolina.
Now, one month after hurricane Milton, FEMA has provided an update but unfortunately has not broken out NFIP claims for that storm specifically.
Instead, FEMA has provided an update on NFIP flood insurance claims filed across three hurricanes that caused some impacts in Florida over the season so far, hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton.
Across the three storms, NFIP policyholders in Florida have filed over 72,000 flood insurance claims so far.
As of November 8th, these NFIP claims have resulted in approximately $894 million in payouts to policyholders in Florida, across the three hurricane events.
As a result, it’s challenging to know how many of these Florida specific NFIP claims that have been filed come from each hurricane.
But it does seem possible that hurricane Milton could be at least half the total, given Debby was a smaller event, while Helene’s flooding was much worse further north and Milton caused more in storm surge damages in Florida, it appears at this stage. Although it’s important to note we can’t be certain, given no storm specific claims data for Milton has been disclosed yet.
English (US) ·