Hurricane Frances

The storm

Frances was everything Charley was not: huge, slow, and wet. A Cape Verde hurricane, it peaked at Category 4 — 145 mph, 935 mb — north of Puerto Rico at the end of August 2004, then plowed through the Bahamas, where surge inundated the airports at Freeport and Marsh Harbour.

Shear took the edge off before Florida. Frances made landfall at the southern end of Hutchinson Island near Stuart at 0430 UTC on September 5 as a Category 2 — 105 mph, 960 mb — just three weeks after Charley and, it would turn out, three weeks before Jeanne hit the same island. Its forward speed was the story: barely 5 mph at the coast, which meant the Treasure Coast took tropical-storm and hurricane-force winds for the better part of a day. The highest measured surge was 5.89 feet at the St. Lucie Lock, with NWS estimates near 8 feet at Vero Beach. Frances crossed the peninsula, re-emerged in the Gulf, and made a second landfall near the Aucilla River in the Big Bend on September 6 as a tropical storm. It then spawned 101 tornadoes on the way north — 45 in South Carolina on September 7 alone, a state daily record — and dropped up to 23.57 inches of rain at Mount Mitchell, North Carolina.

The damage

Duration, not peak wind, drove the losses. Hours of pounding worked shingles loose, then let wind-driven rain into attics and interiors — the classic Frances claim was a roof that "survived" but a house that soaked. More than 73,000 Florida homes were damaged and 4.2 million customers lost power. Kennedy Space Center reported over $100 million in damage, including hundreds of panels stripped from the Vehicle Assembly Building. Total US damage: about $9.5 billion nominal, with insured losses of $4.43 billion ($4.11 billion in Florida). Seven direct US deaths.

The insurance aftermath

Frances turned the 2004 season from a disaster into a policy crisis, because it was the second storm. Percentage-based hurricane deductibles — typically 2 to 5 percent of dwelling coverage — applied per occurrence. A Central Florida home clipped by Charley and soaked by Frances owed two deductibles; after Jeanne, many owed three. Thousands of families absorbed five figures in uncovered loss before their coverage paid a dollar.

The backlash was immediate. In a December 2004 special session, the Legislature passed chapter 2004-480, directing the Department of Financial Services to reimburse policyholders whose insurers applied more than one 2004 hurricane deductible — the amount unpaid due to the second or subsequent deductible, on application by March 1, 2005. In 2005 the fix was made permanent and prospective: Florida law moved to a single calendar-year hurricane deductible, so a policyholder hit by multiple storms in one season pays the hurricane deductible once (later storms in the season apply the smaller all-perils deductible).

Frances also produced a distinctive denial pattern: with wind speeds "only" Category 2, carriers attributed interior water damage to wear, deteriorated seals, or excluded flood rather than storm-created openings. Wind-driven-rain disputes from Frances previewed arguments that returned in every large Florida storm since. And because Jeanne re-crossed the same counties 21 days later, adjusters spent 2005 allocating damage between two storms on one roof — see the Jeanne dossier for how those comparative-causation fights ran.

What policyholders learned

• The season deductible rule exists because of this storm. Multi-storm homeowners who kept per-storm records — dates of loss, per-claim payments, deductible applications — recovered under the 2004 reimbursement program; the paperwork habit paid again in later seasons.
• Duration damage is real damage. Long-duration Category 2 winds destroy roofs incrementally; owners who documented pre-storm roof condition beat "wear and tear" denials more often.
• Interior water needs an opening story. Claims that identified the wind-created opening — lifted shingles, failed flashing, broken soffits — were paid; undifferentiated "water damage" claims were denied as flood or maintenance.
• Power-out losses count. Food spoilage and additional living expenses during week-long outages were routinely under-claimed; policy sublimits applied but seldom zero.
• Photograph between storms. Owners with dated photos after Frances but before Jeanne could prove which storm did what — the single most valuable piece of evidence in two-storm allocation disputes.