Alabama tornadoes: State's insured losses from tornadoes could top $4 billion | al.com

Storm debris being removed at the Houghton home in Concord, Alabama. (Joe Songer, The Birmingham News)
Insured losses from late-April tornadoes could add up to $6 billion in the Southeast, with 70 percent of the losses in Alabama, state Department of Insurance Chief of Staff Ragan Ingram said Monday.
It could be the costliest natural disaster in state history, he said.
Ingram based the numbers on a new estimate by Risk Management Solutions (RMS), an international catastrophe modeling company that shared its information with the state.
The company's estimate of total insured losses in the Southeast from tornadoes between April 25 and April 28 ranges from $3.5 billion to $6 billion.
With an estimated 70 percent occurring in Alabama, that would put the insured losses in the state between $2.45 billion and $4.2 billion.
"That would be the largest insured loss in state history," Ingram said.
Hurricane Ivan produced $2 billion in insured losses.
The tornado which hit Tuscaloosa and traveled to Birmingham accounted for 40 percent of the total Southeastern damage, according to the RMS estimate, with insured losses that could range from $1.4 billion to $2.4 billion.
"This tornado outbreak is set to become one of, if not the, costliest severe convective storm event in U.S. history," said Matthew Nielsen, product manager at RMS.
Nielsen said the elevated damage total is due in part to its impact in heavily populated Jefferson and Tuscaloosa counties.
Ingram said RMS is one of three major disaster modeling companies in the world.
"The department views them as a credible organization," he said. "We are not in a position to argue with them."
In related news, Allstate Corp., the largest publicly traded U.S. home and auto insurer, said it lost $1.4 billion as a result of Southeastern storms in April.
This scale of damage is normally associated with a hurricane, Ingram said.
"We have never contemplated anything like this with a tornadic outbreak. That is what makes this very sad and very significant from a statistical standpoint," Ingram said.
The RMS report noted that 305 tornadoes touched down during the April 25-28 outbreak alone. That breaks the previous April record of 267 in 1974, and is more than double the April average of 161 tornadoes.
Ingram said it is too early to speculate whether the storms and resulting damage will have an impact on insurance rates statewide.
"Will re-insurers look at Alabama differently? How will they look at tornadoes going forward? That is what will drive the marketplace," Ingram said.
The state Insurance Department monitors the way claims are handled and tracks the solvency of insurance companies to make sure they have enough to cover the losses. So far, the department has seen no indication of problems, Ingram said.
In other tornado-related news:
- The Federal Emergency Management Agency has launched a site that allows people displaced by the April 27 tornadoes in Alabama to search online for available rental housing. The agency is also calling on Realtors and landlords to notify the agency of available properties.
The database currently contains almost 20,000 properties statewide, with 8,200 of them in Jefferson County and 1,800 in Shelby. To access the searchable list, go to https://asd.fema.gov/inter/hportal/home.htm.
Those with available properties are asked to call the FEMA Helpline (800-621-3362) to get properties listed in the database.
- The United Way of Central Alabama's 2-1-1 Call Center is no longer seeking volunteers to help in manning its 24-hour-a-day assistance phone line. For 16 days after the storm, the Birmingham call center was taking calls for centers around the state. According to United Way spokeswoman Samuetta Nesbitt, 730 volunteers fielded 20,113 calls during that time, with the highest one-day volume being 2,694 calls.
Now that call centers are back in operation around the state and calls about the disaster are tailing off, the United Way can handle the load with existing personnel, she said.
- Radio station 900 Gold WATV, whose radio tower in Pratt City was destroyed in an April 27 tornado, went back on the air Monday, broadcasting on a temporary tower.