Threat of Northeast hurricanes often overlooked, but remains large

The threat of Northeast hurricanes could be the most overlooked of all the risks, BestWeek’s U.S. Canada edition reports.
BestWeek points to modeller AIR Worldwide’s suggestion that if a Category 3 or 4 storm hits the metropolitan area along the U.S.’s Northeast coast, insured losses could reach US$110 billion from Rhode Island to New Hampshire.
A similar storm hit in the area in 1938 — the so-called ‘Long Island Express’ — causing US$308 million in damages and more than 600 deaths, BestWeek reports.
Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, told delegates of a New York seminar that “there are those that say hurricanes in the Northeast are so unlikely, insurers should not be permitted to charge for that probability,” reported BestWeek.
“Nothing can be further from the truth.”
If a hurricane were to hit the Northeast coast, he continued, the insured losses would easily reach tens of billions. “These are no longer unpopulated areas,” he was reported as saying.
BestWeek noted that the value of insured coastal property in New York in 2007 was about US$2.4 trillion, second only behind Florida.