Property information, analytics, and data provider, CoreLogic, has estimated residential and commercial insured losses from Hurricane Laura in Louisiana and Texas will come in at between $8B-$12B. That estimate includes losses from storm surge and wind, with losses from storm surge contributing less than $0.5 billion to that amount. CoreLogic’s analysis includes losses impacting residential homes and commercial properties, including contents and business interruption, but does not include broader economic loss from the storm.
CoreLogic pointed out that the center of Hurricane Laura struck a more relatively populated area of the Louisiana and Texas coast. “There is never a good place for a hurricane to make landfall. But this was the best possible outcome because it spared the major population centers of Houston and New Orleans,” said Curtis McDonald, meteorologist, and senior product manager of CoreLogic, in a prepared statement.
Hurricane Laura weakened as it moved over land, which kept some metropolitan areas from receiving the full impact of a Category 4 hurricane, CoreLogic said. Laura quickly downgraded into a tropical storm after making landfall, but it left six people dead, buildings destroyed, trees uprooted, and hundreds of thousands without power in Louisiana as it swept northward with drenching rains into Arkansas.