AccuWeather estimating $9 billion in total damage and economic losses from Francine

Thanks to flooding damage, power outages and impacts to oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, among other impacts, Francine is a costly storm.

Transcript

00:00AccuWeather chief meteorologist John Porter is here to discuss AccuWeather's preliminary

00:05estimate of the total damage and economic loss from Hurricane Francine in the United States.

00:09And John looks like another billion dollar disaster.

00:12Yet again another one as we talked about. This was a very significant storm in the New Orleans area.

00:17It was a short duration hurricane hit but it was very impactful with that heavy rain and the

00:23damaging winds. Streets were turned into torrents. Lots of flooding damage in the New Orleans area

00:28and power outages as AccuWeather had warned of first before any other source. AccuWeather

00:33experts breaking news this afternoon. Preliminary estimate of nine billion dollars in damage and

00:39total economic loss from Francine's impacts from the flooding rainfall and of course all of that

00:46wind damage across the southern parishes of Louisiana as well and flooding concerns inland

00:51as well. And for perspective and context a billion dollars is a lot of money but compared to other

00:57storms we've actually had two harder hits even earlier this year. Some of this John may have

01:04been a lot worse if it came in a more populated portion of the coastline. That is correct. There

01:09was of course that's a factor in terms of looking at the total damage and economic loss. It's always

01:14important to put these disasters into context and you can see Ian for example in 2022 AccuWeather

01:20estimated 180 to 210 billion dollars of damage and total economic loss. Debbie this year 28 billion

01:27and 28 to 32 billion from Beryl. So the Francine number is significantly under that but still a

01:33very impactful and damaging storm for those in its path. And we'll continue to track some of the

01:38flood concerns even the transient tornado threat here today in many other areas and John not every

01:44hurricane season is a clean bell curve. This one might have two humps. That's right just because

01:49of that long lull that we have been talking about in the middle of the season. The other thing to

01:54point out about our estimate as well is that we take into account not only damage in terms of

01:59insured and uninsured damage but this is a much more holistic view than available from any other

02:04source. We're looking at impacts to business interruption which was important in this case

02:08because we have many oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico that had to cease operations and port

02:13operations on shore with this storm. First one of those in several years that was a key component

02:18here too. And John I know you're a little more dialed into us than most of us are. Do you know

02:22if they're beginning to return to operations or does it take multiple days to spin back up? Yeah

02:27that can take a few days especially if crews had to be evacuated but over the next few days that

02:32will start to to come back into the normal operations there. And of course the other

02:37aspect here was the flooding damage. Remember flooding damage can be particularly costly

02:43because not only once water gets into structures it can be you have to you have to be concerned

02:48about mold and mildew and those secondary concerns but also oftentimes homeowners insurance doesn't

02:53cover flood damage. It requires a separate insurance cover and so sometimes flood damage

02:58can be significantly under insured. That's very good point there. The National Flood Insurance

03:02Program very different from those offered by private insurance companies. AccuWeather Chief

03:07Meteorologist John Porter we appreciate your insight and then the data analytics team always

03:11interested in what you guys have to offer as well.