What’s New: In Brief (July 25, 2007)

Insured flooding losses in the United Kingdom this summer may yet reach more than 2 billion (Cdn$4.27 billion), less than half of what the regions March 1947 floods would have cost insurers had they happened today 4.5 billion to 6 billion (Cdn$9.6 billion to Cdn$12.8 billion), according to Risk Management Solutions (RMS).RMS estimates the floods in late June cost more than 750 million (Cdn$1.6 billion) in insured losses, and that the current floods will be at least as costly. The catastrophe risk management provider says the 2007 insured flood damage, while not as extensive as the 1947 flooding, will pose the biggest test to the private flood insurance market as flood cover was not widely available until the 1960s and may lead to a serious reconsideration of the availability of flood insurance.”Premiums charged by insurers do not fully reflect the flood risk to which properties are exposed,” commented Robert Muir-Wood, chief research officer at RMS. “This summer’s floods have exposed many shortcomings in flood risk management and the location of critical infrastructure like power stations and water treatment plants, which have been shown to be vulnerable.RMS said it believes existing national flood risk maps as used by councils and property developers are incomplete, omitting both sheet flooding caused by inadequate drainage as well as flooding from minor streams. Also, extreme flood return periods employed for designing flood defences are based on river flows measured over the past half century, [which] may already understate an increase in the hazard of extreme rainfall events associated with climate change.

About one in three people living in U.S. southern coastal areas said they would ignore hurricane evacuation orders if a storm threatened their community, up from about one in four last year, a poll released Tuesday shows.As reported by Yahoo.com, Harvard School of Public Health researchers designed the study, which was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. International Communications Research of Media, Pa., conducted the study, which had a sampling error of plus or minus 2.6%.The survey found the most common reasons for not evacuating were that people believe: their homes are safe and well-built, roads would be too crowded, and fleeing would be dangerous. Also, slightly more than one in four also said they would be reluctant to leave behind a pet.Robert Blendon, the Harvard professor who directed the survey, said the mild 2006 Atlantic hurricane season probably put more coastal residents at ease. “It just shows how people can become complacent if they’re not immediately threatened,” he said.