Barely a month after Hurricane Charley battered Florida, the state has felt two more hurricanes reach landfall. As this issue of Claims went to press, Ivan had just crashed ashore in the Florida panhandle, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and residents of the Southeastern coastline were crossing their fingers that Jeanne and Karl would not come knocking.

"Florida hasn't had to deal with devastating hurricanes in such close succession in decades, and the experience for millions of residents and businesses has been distressing," said Thomas Benoit, president of Catastrophe Management Consultants, a loss consulting firm with headquarters in Tampa, Fla.

The confluence of events resulting in Florida's being struck by three hurricanes has only a two percent chance of occurring in any year in the United States, according to Thomas Larsen, senior vice president of EqeCat. A similar series of events happened three times early in the last century, in 1926, 1933, and 1935. The Labor Day storm of 1935 was one of only three category-five hurricanes to strike the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic Coast in the 20th Century. The last was Hurricane Andrew in 1992.