Insured losses from LA fires could hit $45 billion, new estimate says

• Economic losses are expected to be orders of magnitude higher.

Zoom out: CoreLogic's estimate covers both residential and commercial losses from the two main blazes, the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire.

• "The destruction caused by these fires is anticipated to be the most expensive in the state's history with effects on the insurance industry that will persist into the future," Tom Larsen, a senior director at CoreLogic, said in a statement.
• With both fires still burning as of Friday afternoon, all loss estimates are preliminary.

By the numbers: At $45 billion, the LA fires would range behind some of the biggest disasters in history.

• Per data from the Insurance Information Institute, the only disasters with a higher insured cost were 2005's Hurricane Katrina, 2022's Hurricane Ian and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011.

• Those disasters had much higher human costs, with death tolls in the thousands or tens of thousands. The LA fires uniquely affected areas with very high home values, increasing the financial impact.
• The new estimate is about $15 billion higher than CoreLogic's estimate about a week ago, as the scale of the disaster has become clearer.

Go deeper: Climate change plays key contributing role in LA fires