(Reuters) — Insurers in the United States may take a hit of about $2.7 billion from damage caused by Hurricane Beryl, catastrophe modeling company Karen Clark & Co. said Thursday.
About 1.5 million customers remained without power in Texas on Wednesday, two days after Beryl raked the state, as progress to restore electricity was slow, hampering efforts to quickly restart critical oil infrastructure.
The storm made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on Monday near the coastal town of Matagorda, about 100 miles from Houston, lashing Texas with heavy winds that knocked down power lines and damaged property.
The U.S. estimate includes privately insured damage to residential, commercial and industrial properties and automobiles, as well as business interruption, KCC said in a report.
It does not include boats, offshore properties or National Flood Insurance Program losses.
KCC also said privately insured losses would be close to $510 million in the Caribbean and $90 million in Mexico.
The path of Hurricane Beryl stretched from the Windward Islands in the Caribbean to the Texas Gulf Coast.
Reinsurance broker Gallagher Re estimated that U.S. economic losses from Beryl would be at least $1 billion. Weather forecasting company AccuWeather issued a preliminary estimate of $28 billion to $32 billion in damage and economic loss.
