https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/22/climate-disasters-2025-cost

LA wildfires and storms this year cost $101bn, new study by non-profit resurrecting work axed by Trump says

The first half of 2025 was the costliest on record for major disasters in the US, driven by huge wildfires in Los Angeles and storms that battered much of the rest of the country, according to a climate non-profit that has resurrected work axed by Donald Trump’s administration that tracked the biggest disasters.

In the first six months of this year, 14 separate weather-related disasters that each caused at least $1bn in damage hit the US, the Climate Central group has calculated. In total, these events cost $101bn in damages – lost homes, businesses, highways and other infrastructure – a toll higher than any other first half of a year since records on this began in 1980.

The bulk of this toll was caused by the ferocious wildfires that razed parts of Los Angeles in January, a disaster that destroyed about 16,000 buildings and resulted in the indirect deaths of around 400 people. At $61bn in damages, the LA fires are one of the most expensive climate-related disasters on record in the US, and the only top 10 event that is not a hurricane.

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Over the past four decades, such disasters have become far more savage. The cost of all disasters between 1985 and 1995 was $299bn, a figure dwarfed by the damages of the past decade – with $1.4tn in losses between 2014 and last year.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/22/climate-disasters-2025-cost