Prices of things being destroyed goes up because of inflation, density of things being destroyed goes up because of population expansion. Unsure if anyone's keeping track, but Florida has had mighty large population inflows for years.
Which should not pay to rebuild there. Sure, pay to relocate/rebuild somewhere insurable.
If you can't get a private company to insure you, the government should (and does) insure you as a last resort, usually more expensive than any commercial insurance but still at a loss. But, paying out just to rebuild in the same spot is idiotic. The program should only pay out if you use that money to relocate and/or rebuild somewhere where you can get commercial insurance. If that means you need to move, so be it.
If you can just pay out of pocket to rebuild every few years, that's fine. It's not a human right to live on a beach in a state that gets nailed by a record-setting hurricane every 3 or 4 years (and several times in between).
Plenty of places in the state which are insurable, and at minimal risk, but are getting steamrolled by insurance increases. A good chunk of that is roofing insurance fraud. Nobody pays to reroof anymore out of their own pocket.
Rate increases for insurance in lower risk zones are what pay for repairs in higher risk zones. How many rate increases will it take before most people can't afford insurance? 76% of Florida's population lives in coastal counties[1] and if the remaining 24% of the population has to pay more to insure those high risk coastal properties, but can't (or won't) then it sounds like there is at the very least an insurability crisis which needs addressed.
1. https://www.usgs.gov/centers/spcmsc/science/florida-coastal-...
Most damage is from flooding due to storm surge which exists on coastlines. Wind and power outages happen and can take down trees just like elsewhere in the world but the massive destruction is caused by the force and amount of water on the coasts.
Building codes exist on probability of what can happen. When buildings were built, they had codes to follow based on the current time. When they are destroyed, they are rebuilt with new codes such as on stilts, better windows, different materials, etc. It isn’t like we just keep building the same building and expect things to change.
If you do live on the coast anywhere in the US, it should be a general assumption that at some point, that water is gonna be in your house or that your house is gonna be taken out by the water over its existence.
Just because a hurricane hits Miami doesn't mean the entire state feels it. It rains, streets may get backed up with water around the sewer just like there was a thaw of snow in northern states. You would be surprised how much of a city on the water is not in a flood zone.
You want to live on the water, you are mandatory to pay the fees to maintain insurance if you have a loan or if you own, you can roll the dice and not. Each storm causes areas that may have not been hit in decades to have higher premiums and areas that have never felt a storm in decades that are older builds get knocked down and rebuilt with new code and higher up to prevent another wipe out.
Like, virtually all "disaster aftermath" footage from choppers and drones shows the remains of homes that would get you yeeted out of the planning authority's office here in Europe.
Maybe, but it's my tax dollars. I'm willing to grandfather in an existing home, but I'm not going to pay to rebuild with upgrades, and I'm not willing to pay a dime for the same property again in the future.
The rest of the country should not subsidize people living in high risk places.
And now some parts of California are also becoming uninsurable for wildfire risks. More and more homeowners are switching to government subsidized minimal coverage plans as commercial insurers increasingly refuse to write.
What we'll probably end up doing in Florida, California, and other vulnerable states is further tightening building codes so that structures are more resilient to natural disasters. Better to build something durable than to use insurance money to rebuild after every major disaster. The downside is that this will make housing even more expensive in areas where there are already critical shortages.
That's just FUD from the insurance industry. The vast majority (97%) of California home owners still have a competitive private option and the California FAIR plan insurer of last resort is a little more expensive but fully self funded, unlike the NFIP. To my knowledge it has never been bailed out by taxpayers since it was introduced almost sixty years ago. Most of the remaining 3% are in such remote areas they don't even have municipal fire fighters.
My parents have the FAIR plan in an exurb that hasn't burned in over a century and has had a major nearby wildfire a few years ago, but their immediate neighbors have private fire insurance. They have agreements with their insurers to kill all the small and medium sized plants on their properties with roundup, creating a 50-100 ft fire break around the houses. Since my parents bought the property to grow food on a ten acre homestead, they pay a little extra for the FAIR plan instead of killing everything.
Earthquake risk is hard to evaluate because of all the retrofitting. I'd be more worried about Seattle/Portland but yeah everyone just assumes California will be bailed out when the big one hits (just like we've been bailing out the East and Gulf coast for decades)
If the non-hurricane damage is independent, then you expect $(1/n * cost of major hurricane) additional costs next year. In a major hurricane year, you expect (1-n)/n fewer such hurricanes next year. And therefore you expect less expensive damage.
One could debate whether "likely to be worse" is correct. If there's a a major hurricane every 10 years, there's only a 10% chance of it happening next year. The expected value of the damage is higher, but it's still "unlikely" (as in, less than 50%) to happen at all. So it's expected to be worse, but unless there's over 50% chance of a major hurricane per year, it's not likely to be worse.
If year-to-year hurricanes are also independent, then knowing that there was or was not a hurricane this year, it's also no more or less likely that a major hurricane occurs next year then it was looking forward to this year, as of this time last year. But, I don't know if that is an independent thing.
Not if hurricanes are independently and identically distributed. Which I think you acknowledge could be the case in your last paragraph, but I have not ever come across anything linking hurricane to one another.
A gambler's fallacy is thinking getting 0 this year means it's more likely than 1/n next year to act to retroactively "correct" 0 this year.
1. Each hurricane is an independent event. Florida expects 5 hurricanes per year on average. There were 0 hurricanes this year, so by definition we can expect more hurricanes next year (because 5 > 0). However, the fact that there were zero hurricanes this year doesn't influence next year's season in any way. The statement is just trivially true.
2. Hurricanes are not independent of each other, but rather get stronger the longer you go without one. So if there were none this year then you will likely bear the brunt of it next season. I know this is a thing for earthquakes and other tectonic activity, but not sure if hurricanes work the same way.
What is meant is that since Florida didn't have a major hurricane this year, then next year is likely to be worse than this year, since Florida has a significant chance of being hit by a major hurricane each year.