Ditch the Katrina playbook

Two decades after Hurricane Katrina, are insurers ready for a completely different kind of $100-plus billion disaster?

ON AUGUST 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana, as a Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 125 mph. It had previously reached Category 5 intensity over the Gulf of Mexico, peaking at 175 mph, before weakening prior to landfall. Katrina generated a storm surge over 6 metres high along parts of the Mississippi coast, overtopping and breaching levee systems in New Orleans.