Climate change disasters in Australia cause massive insurance disasters
Floods cause environmental disasters in Australia.
From the source
Extreme weather events caused by the climate emergency pose an existential threat to homeowners and industry alike in Australia, and make the situation so dire that insurers do not accept insurance for these properties.
After the Waragamba Dam overflowed, Dr Kim began to understand the magnitude of what was happening to the area.
A patient called her at her clinic in Riverston, western Sydney, to cancel an appointment to get a prescription because the bridge to the city was closed due to the flood, in addition to her work as a doctor who headed Low, the New South Wales branch of the organization Physicians for the Environment. She had lived and worked in western Sydney throughout her life. Over the years, the market gardens that were run by Maltese families in the current flood plain gave way to new housing, as developers prepared the open land to build on.
But the disasters started striking, the fires broke out first, and now the flood came.
"It is not just floods that hit the region," she says. "There are smoke from fires, high temperatures, (Covid-19) and every other disaster. Temperatures rose two degrees above average during the black summer, and there were storms and hail in eastern Sydney, now with every I think that entire regions will be uninsurable. ”
And the atmospheric scientist who heads the natural hazards unit in the Australian insurance group, Mark Liplaster, says that this specific flood was not surprising, as with Australia moving between the El Niño and La Niña cycles, major climate events loom on the horizon, and Leblaster adds that each new cycle in climate change makes The weather accidents are a little worse than the previous cycle.
The insurance industry calls these events "natural hazards" and ranks them according to their severity. Floods, fires and hailstorms are considered "secondary risks", events that can sometimes last a few minutes or hours only, but cause millions of dollars in damage.
"Primary hazards" are major events such as earthquakes and hurricanes.
The cost to just four insurers - Allianz, QBE Insurance, Suncorp and IAG - in the aftermath of the black summer fires was $ 721 million.
Meanwhile, the insurance industry as a whole lost $ 5.3 billion in damages from wildfires, floods and hailstorms during the first quarter of 2020.
"If you look at the map of New South Wales, there are about 14 local government areas that have been inundated by floods and have also seen forest fires," said Peter Gartlan, the Australian National Financial Advisors' coordinator for bushfire recovery. Consumers, the second issue is that insurance premiums will increase - they are actually increasing - and the government must intervene in this matter. ”
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