Climate change effects in Connecticut prompt closer look at resilience policy

Dec. 21—At a time when billion-dollar weather events around the state and country are steadily increasing, a new panel of experts in climate policy, finance, consumer advocacy, construction and insurance has started its work in creating statewide policies for resiliency.

Jeffrey Czajkowski, director of the Center for Insurance Policy and Research, and the research director of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, said that by November, the economic impacts of severe weather events this year reached nearly $62 billion nationally, including 24 separate billion-dollar weather events.

"It's impacting a pretty wide swath of the country," Czajkowski told the new Severe Weather Mitigation and Resiliency Advisory Council. "The costs include physical damage to residential, commercial, municipal structures and infrastructure as well as business disruptions. This is really the way the insurance industry thinks about and views these losses."

Nationally, such severe, billion-dollar events averaged slightly more than three per year in the 1980s, compared to an average of 22 events in each of the last three years. Over the last 44 years, the economic damages have totaled about $44 trillion, adjusted for inflation, including about $150 billion over the last three years, Czajkowski said. Since 1980, fatalities nationwide have totaled 16,768.

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"Connecticut is no stranger to these events," he said, adding that $43 billion events occurred in the state between 1980 and 2023. Hazards, exposure and vulnerability create the risk and potential loss levels for property owners. "The main point here is that there are things that can be done to structures to make them more resistant to damage. What's really critical is how do you change the vulnerability of these exposures to be able to withstand some of the damage that's caused by these increasing events? What can be done at a property level? What can be done at a community level?"

One example of a community effort was the nearly $17 million recently approved by the town of Stratford to create a barrier against potential flooding at its sewage treatment plant.

Czajkowski warned that consumers might not be aware of the type of insurance on their properties. "If you're a coastal property, do you have flood insurance in place?" Czajkowski said. "Do you have the right amount of insurance? The goal is to really sort of reduce risk. So you want to have insurance in place, but you also want to have risk reduction."

Created in October by state Insurance Commissioner Andrew Mais, the council met Wednesday for its first "listen and learn" session, with the commissioner saying that everything from floods to huge damage from hurricanes as well as forest fires are creating crises from the west coast to the east and around the world.

"When we fortify properties ahead of violent weather, we can not only make a great investment in the future that gives the state fabulous returns, we reduce the financial, emotional and social effects of natural disasters," Mais said, stressing the need to pursue grants and other resources to strengthen communities, especially less-resourced areas. "For them, the gaps in protection are devastating. Let's not forget to save lives. We have to look at our infrastructure. We have to look at how we harden that infrastructure in order to address the effects of climate change."

James O'Donnell, executive director and professor of Marine Sciences at the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation at the University of Connecticut, stressed the need to better prepare as weather events increase in severity.

"It's going to be warmer," O'Donnell said. "There're going to be more hot nights. Sea levels are going up. There will be more frequent flooding. There's likely to be more high intensity hurricanes in Connecticut. They are lower risk around here, but they're of a high-impact. They'll bring with them more high-precipitation events."

Richard Branigan, CEO of the American Red Cross Connecticut and Rhode Island, said that some of the worst property losses occur in the vulnerable handicapped and low-income communities. "It is a recurring event," said the former town manager and public works director. "It is a cycle of disaster that we've never seen before and that we're struggling at times to respond to. The people who end up in our shelters are always the folks who can least afford the impact of a disaster. They will be handicapped and low-income and they will have health issues and a number of things."

Lower income residents and racial and ethnic minorities often live in less well-made housing stock situated in vulnerable locations prone to flooding, he said. "Many people do not have the insurance that covers what they need in terms of disaster response," Branigan said.

The co-chairs of the all-volunteer advisory group include Sonja Larkin-Thorn, a consumer advocate, and Rob Hotaling, a former Independent Party candidate for governor who is a deputy program advisor for infrastructure in the state Department of Revenue Services. "Everything seems to be happening at once," Larkin-Thorn said of the major weather events, which most recently occurred on August 18, when heavy rain and flash flooding caused three deaths and at least $300 million in damage in western Connecticut including Newtown, Oxford, Southbury and Seymour.

Even as some politicians, including Donald Trump, the president-elect, are against action on climate change, insurers are abandoning homeowners around the country where floods, hurricanes and wild fires are worsening and damage claims are on the rise.

"The more we do now to prevent, ahead of a severe storm or impact to our homes and businesses, the better our outcomes will be," Hotaling said, highlighting an industry finding that for every dollar put into making properties more resilient, it can save $13.

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