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GAO-20-633R 1 (2020-09-10)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaebqx0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAOU.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 September 10, 2020 The Honorable Gary C. Peters Ranking Member Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs United States Senate The Honorable Marco Rubio Chairman Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship United States Senate The Honorable Peter A. DeFazio Chairman Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure House of Representatives The Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee House of Representatives Natural Disasters: Economic Effects of Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, and Irma Between January 1980 and July 2020, the United States experienced 273 climate and weather disasters for which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated damages costing $1 billion or more each.1 NOAA estimated that the total cost of damages from these disasters exceeded $1.79 trillion and attributed over 50 percent of these costs to hurricanes and tropical storms. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that federal disaster assistance covered, on average, 62 percent of the costs across the regions affected by these hurricanes for calendar years 2005 through 2015.2 GAO has reported that the rising number of natural disasters and reliance on federal disaster assistance is a key source of federal fiscal exposure.3 You asked us to review the costs of natural disasters and their effects on communities. This report examines (1) estimates of the costs of damages caused by hurricanes and hurricanes' 1NOAA adjusts their damage estimates for inflation, and these estimates are expressed in 2020 dollars. Dollar amounts for cost of damages are drawn from NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (2020), accessed July 14, 2020, https:/Iwww.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/, DOI: 10.25921/stkw-7w73. 2Congressional Budget Office, Potential Increases in Hurricane Damage in the United States: Implications for the Federal Budget (June 2016), 22. 3GAO, The Nation's Fiscal Health: Action Is Needed to Address the Federal Government's Fiscal Future, GAO-20= 403SP (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 12, 2020), 34. GAO-20-633R Economic Effects of Hurricanes Page 1

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