New York — Hurricane Harvey’s second act across southern Texas is turning into an economic catastrophe — with damages likely to stretch into tens of billions of dollars and an unusually large share of victims lacking adequate insurance, according to early estimates. Harvey’s cost could mount to $24bn when including the impact of relentless flooding on the labour force, power grid, transportation and other elements that support the region’s energy sector, Chuck Watson, a disaster modeller with Enki Research, said by phone on Sunday. That would place it among the top eight hurricanes to ever strike the US "A historic event is currently unfolding in Texas," Aon wrote in an alert to clients. "It will take weeks until the full scope and magnitude of the damage is realised," and already it was clear that "an abnormally high portion of economic damage caused by flooding will not be covered", the insurance broker said. Many forecasters were hesitant over the weekend to make preliminary esti...
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