Published reports say the homeowners insurance market is in state of crisis.
Local insurance providers are collapsing under the weight of 600,000 damage claims from no less than four hurricanes.
The ongoing crisis has become one of business-as-usual for Louisiana.
National insurance companies zinged too many times by catastrophic weather events are pulling out the Gulf Coast states leaving home owners to rely on less proven regional insurance providers who are pushed toward default or bankruptcy with as result of the next major weather event.
In the background the greatest storm related disaster, Hurricane Katrina, still looms large with it 725,000 insurance claims and $25-billion dollars in losses.
But the four major hurricanes to hit the region in the last two years have spun up equally daunting 600,000 claims and more than nine billion in losses.
Out of that, more 330-thosuand claims have come from Hurricane Ida.
Already the Louisiana Department of Insurance has seized control of three insurance companies as claims outstripped the companies' ability to pay.
“I wish I could say I thought they were anomalies, but I don’t,” said Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon told the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate.
“We were successful (attracting them), but some of those companies miscalculated their risk. All four would have been fine if it was just Laura, Delta and Zeta. But Ida, on top of those three, broke their backs, because they were inadequately reinsured.”
