Hurricane Helene recovery could cost $34 billion. Here’s who might pay

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene across the southeastern United States could cost upwards of $34 billion, according to early estimates from Moody’s Analytics.

And due to the eroded state of the private insurance landscape in some affected areas, Congress may have to foot the bulk of the bill.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if [Helene] sends another monkey wrench into the insurance market,” Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi told CNBC.

Uprooted trees, winds of 140 miles per hour winds and mass flooding ravaged towns and cities in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee over the past week.

As of Thursday, the storm had killed more than 200 people and left hundreds more missing. Nearly 1 million people remained without power.

The Moody’s report, released as Helene was making landfall last week, estimated that property damage could cost between $15 billion to $26 billion.

And the resulting economic slowdown could cost $5 billion to $8 billion in productivity losses.

These initial estimates are low and will likely be revised higher as the full scope of the storm’s damage comes into view, Zandi told CNBC.

Most of the damage from Helene is attributable to storm surges and river flooding.

That means flood insurance, not standard property insurance, is supposed to cover the damage, according to Mark Friedlander, spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute.

That is a problem, Friedlander said, because “many of the hardest-hit areas of the Southeast and southern Appalachia have very low flood insurance take-up rates.”

Only about 6% of U.S. homeowners have flood insurance through either a private company or the congressionally funded National Flood Insurance Program, despite 90% of natural disasters involving flooding, he said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which in the past year has operated on a tight budget, has been coordinating the recovery response to Helene.

On Aug. 7, FEMA triggered its “Immediate Needs Funding” status as money ran low in its Disaster Relief Fund.

That meant the agency would only spend on immediate disasters and paused its longer-term rebuilding efforts across the country.

On Tuesday, FEMA got a much-needed $20 billion cash infusion after Congress’ stopgap funding bill went into effect.

But as government officials assess the full scale of…