Fire and flood: 'Whole areas of Australia will be uninsurable'
By Royce Kurmelovs
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Now it was happening again. First came fire, now came the flood.
“This is not just the floods, it’s the smoke and the heat and Covid and everything else,” she says. “Every single disaster, we seem to be on the pointy end of it.
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After the events of the past two years, that question – what is going to happen with insurance? – is proving increasingly significant for entire communities and the insurance industry as they confront a climate-shocked future.
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While a flood may be costly thanks to the expensive recovery process that follows, the nightmare scenario is for a cyclone to slam into a heavily populated area in a region such as south-east Queensland. While the chance of this happening would have once been considered zero, climate change means the possibility can no longer be totally discounted.
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With more than 17,000 insurance claims filed as of Wednesday morning, an early industry estimate puts the total estimated damage across two states at $254.2m.
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