For the insurance industry, the forest fires in California in the past year, the worst fire of all time. The world’s largest reinsurer Munich Re has estimated the total economic Loss on Tuesday at $ 24 billion, a multiple of the in case of Fire usual sum. Of which $ 18 billion were insured. According to the analysis, the climate scientists from Munich to see Re in it an indication of climate change.

“These fires were a new loss record, even with nearly 100 deaths a sad humanitarian sacrifice highest level,” said Ernst Rauch, head of the climate research Department. Before that, it had been in the American Federal state in the year 2017 the record of damage caused by forest fires. “There is the case of natural disasters always outliers, but two years in a row is a multiple of the normal loss amount, that is particularly striking.”

The damages should be, among other things, that’s why so high, because the settlement in the California’s mountain region is continuing to increase. “But that’s not the only explanation, there are meteorological anomalies.” California is one of the regions that have warmed in the past decades is above average. “It is not the number of fires has increased, but the affected area. It burns more and faster.“