It may be extremely quiet here at what’s typically the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, but that’s no reason to relax. All it takes is one great storm.
For that reason, Swiss Re, the giant reinsurance company, spends a lot of time and money going back in time trying to gauge the scope of losses it may have to cover in years to come. Its experts work with officials in places like New York City to try to limit exposure to hazards that, while rare, are ultimately inevitable.
That’s why one of the company’s atmospheric and ocean scientists, Megan E. Linkin (the photo is from when she was interviewed for The Times in 2010), just re-ran one of the region’s most awesome disasters — the great Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane of 1821, but with today’s heavily developed metropolitan region in harm’s way. The result is, needless to say, deeply sobering, showing that the losses from Hurricane Sandy were, as many experts have warned, nowhere near a worst case.
The study’s bottom line?
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/looking-back-to-1821-insurers-foresee-a-100-billion-hurricane/If the 1821 Hurricane were to happen today, it would cause 50% more damage than Sandy and potentially cause more than $100 billion in property losses stemming from storm surge and wind damage.
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