"When the market increases, there are generally more people going after it because there's a bigger potential for gain, " said Andrew Storms, who directs safety efforts at online security company nCircle.

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And some are afraid the trend will continue if the industry doesn't get back to the more conservative underwriting requirements it got away from during a nearly three-decade period that lacked any real debilitating storms before Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

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This is a higher destructive potential than any hurricane observed since 1969, including Category 5 storms like Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Camille, and Andrew.

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Florida had a mishmash of local construction standards before Andrew destroyed neighborhoods south of Miami but imposed statewide regulations afterward and did much better in the storms of 2004-05, he said.

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People who live through these storms regularly on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts talk about how, Yeah, I lost that tree in Andrew, or, I lost that house in Katrina.

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