AIR Damage Estimate $1B to $2.5B
Dennis Slams Fla. Panhandle;
Hurricane Dennis slammed into the northern coastline of the Gulf of Mexico between Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach, Fla. July 10 shortly after 3 p.m. (EDT) packing top sustained winds of 120 mph.
The hurricane lost momentum as it moved inland at about 21 mph and was downgraded to a Category 2 hurricane with winds as high as 105 mph. As the evening progressed, the storm was downgraded to a tropical storm, with 60 mph winds 60 mph. Winds of 74 mph are required for a storm to be classified a hurricane.
AIR Worldwide estimates insured losses in the United States from Hurricane Dennis will be between $1 billion to $2.5 billion.
Although Dennis made landfall in the same region as Hurricane Ivan in 2004, insured losses from Dennis are expected to be significantly lower than Ivan’s, since Dennis differed from Ivan in four important aspects: intensity, size, speed and location.
While Dennis and Ivan were both Category 3 hurricanes, Ivan had sustained wind speeds of 130 mph versus 120 mph for Dennis. Hurricane Dennis was also a more compact storm. Ivan’s peak winds extended about 25 miles from the center, while Dennis’ peak winds extended only about 10 miles from the center, resulting in a much narrower swath of damage.
At landfall, Dennis’ forward velocity was approximately 21 mph versus 13 mph for Ivan. “Dennis’ relatively fast forward speed will also mean less damage to properties than occurred from Hurricane Ivan,” according to Dr. Atul Khanduri, manager of wind risk modeling for AIR Worldwide.
“Damage does not occur instantaneously, rather it accumulates over time from repeated battering. AIR’s hurricane model explicitly captures this phenomenon, which engineers call “fatigue failure.”
When prolonged winds occur over a very large geographic area, as in Hurricane Ivan, the number of claims can increase significantly. Losses for Dennis would have been higher had the storm moved at a slower pace.”
After 36 hours tracking parallel to Florida’s west coastline, Hurricane Dennis made landfall east of Pensacola, Fla., an area with less property than the area impacted by Ivan.
High demand for repairs following Florida’s 2004 hurricanes drove repair costs up, adding significantly to insurers’ losses. “In an analysis of detailed claims data from the 2004 hurricane season, AIR found that the effect was magnified by the fact that the storms were clustered both in time and location,” said Khanduri. “AIR introduced enhancements to its catastrophe risk systems to enable insurers to apply a demand surge factor to their loss estimates on an aggregate basis to account for the increase in costs resulting from multiple storms in close proximity. Much of the damage from 2004 has not yet been repaired and will impact the ability of contractors to respond to Dennis. In this way the damage from 2004 will likely lead to increased repair costs for Dennis.”
AIR will be dispatching a post-disaster survey team to the Gulf coast and will have further feedback and analysis from the team later this week.
The concern as Dennis moved inland July 10 was for heavy rains and possible tornadoes in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and up into the Ohio Valley July 11.
A scan of the area between Navarre Beach and Pensacola Beach showed the expected ripped-apart gas station awnings and overturned sheds but few downed power lines and trees.
July 9, Dennis battered the Florida Keys with rain and wind gusts as high as 105 mph, forcing evacuations along the state’s west coast.
LAAIA, business-as-usual
Latin American Association of Insurance Agencies conferees attended the Saturday night banquet in Hollywood, Fla. as scheduled and reported only 30 attendees bailed out due to hurricane worries. Attendees from the west coast of Florida were closely watching the progress of Dennis, but breathed a sign of relief when it moved off the west coast and meteorologists predicted it would miss the southern portion of the state.
Enrique J. Ruiz was installed as the new LAAIA president and members celebrated during a festive evening, despite worries about the safety of their friends and relatives in Cuba. Many attendees were attempting to contact Cuba to determine how hard the island was hit and to ascertain if their relatives and friends were safe.
Dennis, which was blamed for up to 32 deaths in Haiti and Cuba, is the season’s first hurricane, a season which still has a number of months to go.
The storm’s eye made landfall on central Cuba’s southern coast a second time shortly before 2 p.m. July 8 near Cienfuegos, Cuba, about 125 miles southeast of Havana, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.