2011: A record-breaking year for natural disasters in the U.S.

October 8, 2011 – BATON ROUGE, LA – September’s T.S. Lee was just another reminder that Louisiana is one of the nation’s true ‘hot spots’ when it comes to tropical landfalls. In addition, Lee is just another example of a long list of weather events making 2011 an extraordinary year for extreme weather over the United States. A recent report by the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) notes that by the end of September, the U.S. had already broken the record number of federal disaster declarations issued in a single year. The 86 federal disaster declarations through the first nine months of 2011 tops the previous annual record of 81, which was set just last year. In addition, the estimated price tag of nearly $25 billion through September places 2011 among the five or six costliest years on record in terms of insurance claims. By comparison, for the 15 years from 1996 through 2010, there were an average of 58 such declarations per year, and only three years — 1996, 2008 and 2010 — had 75 or more declarations. Some of the increase since the mid 1990s can be attributed to a greater willingness on the fed’s part to issue declarations, but certainly Mother Nature has been extra busy in recent years. Not only has 2011 been extraordinarily active in terms of the number of weather-related disasters, but the U.S. has suffered through a full array of extreme weather events this year. A powerful winter storm over much of the central and eastern U.S. at the end of January began the run of extremes, followed by one of the deadliest and most active “tornado seasons” on record for the nation as a whole. Spring and summer Ohio and Mississippi river flooding added to the burden, while one of the most devastating droughts on record persists across the Southern Plains, extending into western and northern Louisiana. The Southern U.S. drought has not only been devastating for the region’s agriculture, but it also has spawned record and near-record wildfire frequencies. And more recently, August’s Hurricane Irene — with her track from the Carolinas into New England — wreaked havoc through the nation’s most densely populated corridor. All of these extreme events come at a time when Congress is debating how to continue FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), a program of critical importance to many flood-prone Louisiana residents. –WAFB