Local authorities are foreseeing economic losses in the billions of Euros related to floods in Italy due to the massive disaster, while the insurance industry is expected to bear a smaller portion of the overall cost due to an existing protection gap for flood coverage, as stated by Aon.
“Given the extensive scale of the disaster, local authorities are already anticipating economic losses in the billions of EUR. As a significant protection gap for flood coverage remains in place, impact on the insurance industry was expected to be a smaller percentage of the total cost,” Aon stated in its Weekly Cat Report on May 19.
“Damage assessments remain ongoing as multiple water courses still exceed flood stages. Additional rainfall is also expected in the coming days and the situation thus remains critical and more evacuations were announced on May 19.”
Torrential rainfall and flooding have severely affected the regions of Emilia-Romagna and Marche in Italy. As of May 19, there have been 14 confirmed fatalities and several missing individuals.
Over 10,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, with significant displacement in the provinces of Bologna, Forlì-Cesena, and Ravenna. Firefighters have conducted more than 2,175 emergency missions, and approximately 400 roads have been closed due to flooding, the report noted.
Additionally, there have been over 50,000 power outages and significant agricultural losses on tens of thousands of hectares of crop land, impacting more than 5,000 farms.
The Emilia-Romagna region is still recovering from previous flooding earlier this month, which caused two fatalities and considerable damage to property and infrastructure.
Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria, and the Czech Republic have also experienced flooding, resulting in submerged buildings, power outages, and minor material damage.
