When he reminded attendees at the 2005 Windstorm Conference that predicting hurricane landfall was still far from being an exact science, Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, probably was preaching to the choir.
Pointing to a slide showing a map of the predicted landfall for Hurricane Charley, he noted that the Tampa Bay area was projected to be ground zero before the storm unexpectedly took a sharp turn into Charlotte County. Mayfield's comments brought back scary memories to the locals in the room, reminding them that Charley likely would have been a Category 5 storm as it crossed densely populated Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Although the storm missed the Tampa Bay area, Charley's 145 mile-per-hour winds still caused $6.8 billion in insured losses, while destroying 10,000 homes and severely damaging another 17,000.
Although the damage from Charley would have been enough for any state to absorb, it was just one of four major storms to make landfall in Florida during the 2004 season. All told, the state suffered some $21 billion in losses, which, as Mayfield pointed out, could have been worse.
Recommended For You
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader
Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more inforrmation visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
