Study raises La. to 3rd in financial storm surge risk

It’s obvious that Louisiana is always at high risk during hurricane season.

But exactly how much money is at stake?

According to the 2014 CoreLogic storm surge analysis, Louisiana ranks second among all states in number of properties at risk and third in value of reconstruction costs for homes at risk.

The analysis states that a whopping 738,165 Louisiana properties are at risk from storm surge. Only Florida’s 2,488,277 properties rank higher.

As for the states with the estimated highest value of reconstruction costs, Louisiana ($161.1 billion) lags behind only Florida ($490.4 billion) and New York ($182.5 billion).

In last year’s study, Louisiana also came in second in number of properties at risk, but it came out fifth in estimated highest value of reconstruction costs. CoreLogic says this year’s analysis has been expanded from prior years’ reports to encompass additional categories of single-family residential structures including mobile homes, duplexes, manufactured homes and cabins.

In the Houma-Thibodaux area, the analysis estimates that the great majority of properties are in very high or extreme danger of yielding storm surge damage.

According to the data, 24,886 Houma-Thibodaux properties are at a very high storm surge risk, and 35,318 Houma-Thibodaux properties are at an extreme storm surge risk totaling estimated reconstruction values of $4.9 billion and $7 billion, respectively.

CoreLogic defines very high risk as properties that would be affected by category storms 2-5, and extreme risk as properties that would be affected by all categories of hurricanes.

2,979 properties in the Houma-Terrebonne area are at high risk, and only 71 of the greater than 63,000 properties come in at low or moderate risk, according to the data.

The grand total of estimated reconstructed costs for the Houma-Thibodaux area comes in at 12.5 billion, roughly 7.8 percent of Louisiana’s total.