From Artemis, July 16:
Severe flooding across a number of countries in Europe looks set to become one of the most expensive flood episodes on record, with the insurance and reinsurance industry expecting billion Euro industry losses.
So far flooding has most severely impacted parts of Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and also Switzerland is under threat, but with more heavy rainfall forecast for the region today and river and lake levels still rising, further damaging impacts are anticipated.
Germany has been particularly impacted, with severe property damage seen as rivers burst their banks, sadly resulting in more than 80 deaths and currently hundreds more unaccounted for.
It is the worst floods Germany has seen for decades and the torrential rainfall that caused it is being termed unprecedented by many.
Record rainfall levels drove rivers above their banks in just hours in some cases, while in other areas rivers are set to rise much further and further flooding anticipated.
The German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia are the regions with the largest impacts so far, but Belgium which has reported another 11 deaths from the floods and the Netherlands have also been badly affected, with further flooding also seen in Luxembourg and Switzerland.
In Switzerland a number of lakes are close to over-topping and there is some concern for major cities there should additional rainfall prove significant.
Insurance and reinsurance broker Aon’s Impact Forecasting division has reported on the flooding event in its latest weekly catastrophe report, saying that this episode has been, “The worst regional flooding in decades resulted from record rainfall on July 13-14 that prompted the overflow of several tributaries flowing into the northern and southern branches of the Rhine River.”
As a result, Aon reports that thousands of properties have been inundated by flood water and this is likely to keep rising, with additional rivers set to burst their banks across the region and more torrential rains expected.
Additionally, there has been more severe convective storm weather across a wider swathe of Europe associated with the same systems that brought this extreme rainfall, so there will be damages across parts of France, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to add to the main countries impacted.
Aon is expecting billion Euro plus costs from this flood event, although from the scale of the damage reported so far it does look like this ongoing flood event could end up with an economic and industry loss significantly higher....
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