Analysis Looks at Annual Cost of Natural Disasters

A recent blog post by Kermit Baker and Alexander Hermann of the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University looked at losses from natural disasters over the last 12 years. They found that the total cost of the natural disasters that occurred in 2017, including Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, could exceed disaster-related damages from any year in the last two decades. While inflation-adjusted, disaster-related damages have averaged about $40 billion a year between 1994 and 2015, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria together caused about $150 billion in damages, according to estimates from CoreLogic and Moody’s Analytics.

The authors suggest that this past year's record-setting disasters will result in substantial spending on rebuilding, repairs, and improvements to disaster-damaged homes, and the bulk of repairs and improvements will take up to three years.