With 2019's peak hurricane season (which starts in August and ends in October) under way, a new survey has found that homeowner attitudes do not reflect the real risk of storm damage. While 77% of homeowners said that they felt prepared for hurricane season, nearly one in four homeowners had made no hurricane safety preparations.
More worryingly, most surveyed homeowners severely underestimate the potential cost of hurricanes and flood damage. When asked, over 50% of survey respondents estimated that the average home would require less than $10,000 in damage repairs after a hurricane or flood. Those estimates undershot the average claim amounts for wind and hail damage ($10,200) and for flood damage ($92,000).
As reported by Value Penguin, homeowners from the riskiest coastal states showed a lack of urgency in preparing to deal with the consequences of a hurricane. Of the over 500 homeowners surveyed in the 19 states most at risk for a hurricane, 77% "felt prepared" for the 2019 hurricane season. However, about 48% of these respondents also revealed that they had not yet started preparing for hurricane season, which lasts from June to November every year.
43% of respondents who live in high risk states said that weather professionals exaggerate the risk of hurricanes, compared to the 30% of respondents who lived in the rest of the country. A further 56% of the surveyed homeowners said they were reluctant to evacuate their homes and would only leave if evacuation were mandatory (as opposed to recommended). Most worryingly, 1 in 10 homeowners said they would not evacuate at all.
As the peak of the 2019 hurricane season is underway, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) updated its forecast to predict five to nine hurricanes in the Atlantic before the end of November. Data shows that most hurricane seasons to date had an average of six hurricanes. Yet, nearly half of all survey respondents predicted that the United States would experience only three hurricanes in 2019.
When asked how much money they thought it would cost to repair the average home after a hurricane or flood, 52% of the surveyed homeowners guessed that the sum would be less than $10,000. This figure is several times smaller than the average claim filed during recent hurricanes
- which ranged from $30,000 (Hurricane Irene) to over $100,000 (Hurricane Harvey). More worryingly, in high-risk states, 45% of homeowners said they didn't know how much hurricane-related insurance they would need
in order to
be protected against the financial fallout of a hurricane.
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