Jared Moskowitz calls for federal insurance catastrophe fund, supplemental spending for Hurricane Ian

Jared Moskowitz turned in another banner year. Image via Jared Moskowitz.

As Hurricane Ian nears Florida, the state’s former “master of disaster” is calling on Congress to create a post-catastrophe reserve fund for insurance companies and set aside more recovery dollars for the storm now on its way.

Broward County Commissioner Jared Moskowitz, who led the Division of Emergency Management through hurricanes and a pandemic, said Wednesday that the time is now for federal lawmakers to act.

Ian is on a collision course with more than 1 million homes with a replacement value of nearly $260 billion. That level of damage could prove ruinous for Florida’s insurance market, which has seen five insurance companies fail in the first eight months of 2022.

A federal fix to spread out the financial burden among insurance companies is long overdue, and Ian should be the last wake-up call Congress needs to address the problem, Moskowitz said.

“My insurance company dropped me. And in the letter they sent me, it said, ‘hurricane exposure.’ I called them up and said, ‘When did you guys find out about this?’ It’s totally ridiculous,” he said.

“But listen, insurance companies have a business to run, and now you’re talking about in the last five years having one Cat 5 in Michael, an almost Cat 5 in Ian — I don’t think one state can solve that problem. It’s a national issue.

“California is one bad earthquake from it happening. You’ve got tornado-prone states, flood-prone states, fire-prone states. This issue should be amortized nationally, and in order for Floridians to be able to protect their homes, we need help from the federal government.”

Moskowitz, who won a Democratic Primary last month to succeed U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch in Florida’s 23rd Congressional District, said Congress should also pass a supplemental spending bill for Hurricane Ian. Party divisions shouldn’t be a factor, he added.

“Ian is going to be on the list of Andrew, Michael, Katrina and Sandy — the exclusive list that you don’t want a hurricane to be on. And the amount of money that’s going to be spent by the state, FEMA and other federal and state agencies — we’re going to need a federal supplement,” he said.

“And it’s something that should be bipartisan. Sometimes different areas of the country want to make it a partisan issue because they don’t want to help a state or they don’t want to help a particular Governor. But this should happen when Congress is back in Session, and it should happen swiftly.”

Ian’s wind speeds Wednesday reached 155 mph — 2 mph shy of Category 5 speeds — as it crawled at roughly 10 mph north-northeast across the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Hurricane Center.

In West, Central and Southwest Florida, the center forecasted “widespread deep inundation,” “extreme beach erosion” and “massive damage to marinas, docks, boardwalks, and piers.”

NHC personnel said coastal areas between Bonita Beach and Chokoloskee in Collier County could see surges of up to 11 feet of water, while most of the Peninsula will experience “major” to “extreme” flooding rain in the coming days.

As of 12:40 p.m., mandatory evacuation orders were in place for Charlotte, Citrus, Clay, Collier, Flagler, Hernando, Hillsborough, Lee, Levy, Pasco, Pinellas, St. Johns and Sarasota counties.

Alachua, Manatee, Nassau, Polk and Putnam counties faced partial evacuation orders, while Franklin, Gilchrist, Glades, Highlands, Orange, Seminole, Taylor and Volusia were under voluntary evacuation orders.

But the time to safely evacuate from Collier and Sarasota counties is over, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who advised residents still in those areas to shelter in place rather than hit the road.

The Governor confirmed 40,000 power outages were already reported.

“If you are where that storm is approaching, you’re already in hazardous conditions,” he said. “It’s going to get a lot worse very quickly. Please hunker down. Treat this like a tornado and make sure that your friends and family know where you are.”

For residents in places Ian hits hardest, the changes will be long-lasting, Moskowitz said.

“When people are finally let back into the area, there will be parts they don’t recognize anymore,” he said.

“The landscape is going to be changed. The initial response will take days and weeks. The cleanup will take six months, and the recovery is going to take years. That’s the level we’re dealing with here. This is not a storm people are overhyping.”

Fortunately, he continued, Florida has gotten excellent at preparing for, responding to and recovering from high-magnitude storms. That includes some 14,000 emergency workers, ample supplies, medical vehicles and communications systems now in “strategic locations” across three southeastern states before Ian makes landfall.

“Florida has the best emergency management department in the country — I know that because I ran it for two and a half years — and they have the playbook, unfortunately, because we just did this four years ago with Hurricane Michael,” he said.

“Kevin Guthrie, who’s the Director now, was the deputy when I was the Director. He’s done this not just once or twice, and he was also a county EMS Director, so he knows exactly what resources need to be ordered.

“But with a Category 5 storm, it’s very hard to meet all the needs immediately. So, there will be an immediate response, and then there’s going to be a response for several days thereafter.”