How Business Was Battered by Irma<br />“If you’ve lost a day, you’ve lost that day and you can’t get it back.”<br />Roughly 100 sites shut down across the state in advance of the storm, including the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex<br />and the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, according to the Florida Attractions Association.<br />AIR Worldwide, a catastrophe modeling firm in Boston, predicted on Monday<br />that Irma’s insured damage in the United States would cost the industry $20 billion to $40 billion.<br />“This is a really hard loss — hundreds of millions of dollars in aggregate for the industry down there.”<br />Last year, 68 million tourists visited Orlando, and more than 70 million were expected this year, Mr. Speigel said.<br />The big national carriers like State Farm and Allstate cut back on writing homeowners’ insurance<br />in Florida years ago, citing catastrophic risks and unhelpful state regulators.<br />But once firms assess the condition of their fleets, many are expected to work with federal<br />and state agencies and insurance adjusters to make vehicles available for rent to assist in recovery efforts.
