Insurance payments to victims of Hurricane Frances are expected to reach $4.4 billion, making it the fourth most costly storm in U.S. history, an insurance industry group said Thursday.
The sum is on top of $7.4 billion in claims expected from Hurricane Charley, and another large payout is expected after claims are toted for Hurricane Ivan.
"We're seeing Ivan as being much like Frances, in that it will be less costly in terms of insured losses than Charley," said Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute, which provided the claims estimates. "There will be economic losses from flooding, but we haven't seen the kind of structural damage we saw with Charley."
Ivan persisted as a tropical storm on Thursday, one week after striking the U.S. Gulf Coast as a hurricane.
Frances made landfall in central Florida on Sept. 3 with winds of 105 mph, making it a Category 2 hurricane.
Despite being three times the size of Charley, wind speeds were lower. Frances, a tropical storm by the time it reached the Florida Panhandle, triggered tornadoes and heavy rain in several states.
Charley struck Florida's western coast in August as a Category 4 storm with a wind speed of 145 mph (233 kph). Ivan was a Category 3 storm with winds of 130 mph (214 kph) when it slammed into Alabama near the Florida border.
The insurance institute, based in Jersey City, New Jersey, said Florida accounted for $4.1 billion in insured property losses and more than 500,000 claims from Frances. More than 552,000 claims overall are expected, it said.
The most costly U.S. hurricane was Andrew, a Category 5 storm that struck Florida and the Gulf Coast in August 1992 and resulted in $15.5 billion of insured losses, or about $20.6 billion in current dollars.
Hurricane Hugo, which devastated parts of the Carolinas in September 1989, generated $4.2 billion of claims, or about $6.3 billion in current dollars.
Overall economic losses are always higher than insured losses.