The loss and damage bill from catastrophic Texas Hurricane Harvey is already charting comparisons to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the costliest natural disaster in US history, which caused $ 108bn including insured losses.

An insurance research group said on Sunday it was too early to make precise estimates of the damages as there was a forecast of heavy rainfall to dump till Friday.

The Insurance Information Institute’s spokesperson Loretta Worters told journalists that “it could be a flood loss like Katrina because of the amount of water that’s coming in … not as much wind as it will be water”.

The government program called National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) for most Americans, paid $15 billion in flood insurance losses in Louisiana and Mississippi caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Insurance broker BMS Group’s resident Meteorologist Andrew Siffert said it was straightforward that Harvey will easily reach well over $10 billion in monetary misfortune, and estimated the insured loss at over $5 billion. That figure did exclude cash that would be paid by NIFP.

It has been learned that many US homeowners have no property insurance though some do have the coverage for wind damage from hurricanes, not from the flood.

There was 12 percent of people in flood-prone areas who had flood insurance in 2016, according to a national poll, Reuters reports.

Some estimates show there was 15 percent of the Houston area was insured for flood.

Congressional reforms endeavors, bolstered by a coalition of environmental activists and free-market advocates, have to a great extent been upset by water-front real estate interests.

The NFIP owes $24.6 billion to the U.S. Treasury. Numerous administrators are doubtful that obligation will ever be reimbursed, according to Reuters.