This story was originally published by the HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The Camp Fire, which killed 86 people and burned the Northern California town of Paradise to the ground in November, was last year’s most expensive natural disaster worldwide, according to a report from German-based global reinsurance company Munich Re.
The fire, which was the deadliest and most destructive in the state’s modern history, tore through nearly 14,000 homes around Paradise, a rural community about an hour and half north of Sacramento.
Now the blaze holds another devastating record, according to the report released Tuesday: the costliest natural disaster in 2018. Each year the reinsurer tracks major natural catastrophes and estimates the losses incurred, including to insurers, in its natural catastrophe loss database.
Natural disasters worldwide in 2018 cost a total of about $160 billion — significantly higher than the average over the last 30 years of about $140 billion (adjusted for inflation).
The Camp Fire was the costliest last year, at $16.5 billion in losses, including $12.5 billion of insured losses. Th... Read more
