Hurricane Irene will most likely prove to be one of the 10 costliest catastrophes in the nation’s history, but analysts warned that much of the damage might not be covered by insurance because so much of it was caused not by winds but by flooding, which is excluded from many standard policies. Industry estimates put the cost of the storm at $7 billion to $10 billion, largely because the hurricane pummeled an unusually wide area of the East Coast. Beyond deadly flooding that caused havoc in upstate New York and in Vermont, the hurricane flooded cotton and tobacco crops in North Carolina, temporarily halted shellfish harvesting in Chesapeake Bay, sapped power and kept commuters from their jobs…
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Hurricane Irene among the costliest catastrophes in the U.S.