Economic toll from last year’s natural disasters was highest in the US in nearly a century
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Climate change is making natural disasters more frequent and severe, leading to disastrous consequences for the planet. As the world continues to warm, climate change is making natural disasters stronger and more damaging, increasing in severity and frequency. The recent fires were fueled by hurricane-force winds, but also by tinderbox conditions driven by climate-fueled drought.
![[A firefighting helicopter drops water as the Palisades Fire grows near Encino, California, earlier this month. Firefighters are still fighting the blaze, which is now nearly 60 percent contained]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/20/23/GettyImages-2192872523.jpg)
“The catastrophic wildfires burning in Southern California combined with destructive hurricane impacts last year have been the worst series of natural disasters in America since the Dust Bowl in the 1930s,” AccuWeather founder Dr. Joel N. Myers said in a recent release.
![[Crushed vehicles are uncovered after days in debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene last September in Old Fort, North Carolina. The storm dropped 40 trillion gallons of water on the Southeast]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/20/23/GettyImages-2175040304.jpg)
Myers said that drought, water, and insurance concerns would likely force Californians out of the state some 90 years after the Dust Bowl’s migration to California. Myers forecast that with thousands of multi-million-dollar homes destroyed, impacts to property values and a loss of tax revenue will likely have major implications for the region’s economy that could “worsen the migration out of California, as more families consider moving to states with lower taxes and a lower risk of wildfires.”.
![[A firefighter stands on top of a fire truck to battle the Palisades Fire amid a powerful windstorm earlier this month in Los Angeles, California. Another Santa Ana wind event was forecast this week in Los Angeles County]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/20/23/GettyImages-2192374864.jpg)
The monetary estimate is higher than others because it includes the price of immediate and long-term health care, excess deaths, and dozens of additional factors like cleanup costs, damage to crops and infrastructure, travel delays, power outages, emergency management, relocations, and government expenses.
But, that’s only a fraction of the economic toll of nine additional disasters that AccuWeather had issued preliminary estimates for over the course of the past 12 months. The total estimated damage and economic loss has leapt to nearly $800 billion, it said.
