After climate disasters, homeowners find their battle with insurers is just beginning

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Danny Wilcox-Frazier—VII/Redux Pictures

‘Almost everyone is getting screwed’: After climate disasters, homeowners find their battle with insurers is just beginning

Not a week goes by, it seems, without another catastrophic, extreme weather-driven disaster wreaking havoc on another place around the globe. It’s the California’s Dixie Fire, the latest record-breaker in the wildfire-prone state. Or the wildfires ravaging Turkey and Greece. Or the heatwave in the Pacific Northwest (not to be confused with the heatwave that struck the Pacific Northwest in June, claiming the lives of more than 100 people.) As of July 9, America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has already tallied 8 weather or climate disasters in the U.S. where economic losses exceeded $1 billion in 2021. In 2020, NOAA’s count reached 22 such events. 

These disasters make headlines in the moment, but the aftermath—the trauma they inflict, what it takes to recover from them, and who foots the bill to do so—rarely gets the same attention.

Historically, among the biggest players in those recovery efforts have been the property and casualty insurers, a multibillion industry that for decades has protected home and business owners against the risks of inclement weather. But this new, deeply-reported feature from Erika Fry finds that that model is beginning to fray under the onslaught of climate-driven catastrophes. Fry investigates the experience of Iowans impacted by the August 2020 derecho—a freakishly intense and unprecedented windstorm that now holds the title as America’s most expensive thunderstorm—and finds that, a year later, some homeowners are still mired in conflict with their insurers, feeling trapped in a system structured to put them at a disadvantage. Their struggle, and what it reveals about the state of an industry under growing climate pressure, is a story every homeowner should read.

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