The wreckage caused by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica is expected to cost insurers $1 billion to $3 billion, according to property intelligence company Cotality.
The insured losses are a fraction of the total property damage, which Cotality estimates at $2 billion to $5 billion, though much uncertainty remains amid limited observations of the devastation. Other estimates of the total economic losses fall around $8 billion, or roughly 35% of the island’s gross domestic product.
Melissa made landfall Tuesday as a Category 5 hurricane near New Hope, Jamaica, with winds of 185 miles (298 kilometers) per hour, becoming the strongest storm on record to hit the island. It later headed toward Haiti, Cuba and Bermuda, leaving about 50 people dead across the Caribbean, according to Agence France-Presse.
Although Cotality estimates that 25% of Jamaica’s population lived in Parishes that faced hurricane-force winds, the population around the capital of Kingston avoided a direct hit.
Still, the storm severely damaged at least 40% of the buildings and roads in the Montego Bay tourist center and much of the western part of the country, according to a Bloomberg analysis of satellite data processed by the Earth Observatory of Singapore.
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