A man on top of a house surveying tornado damage in Moore, Okla..

Joe Wertz / StateImpact Oklahoma

Why It’s Hard to Put a Dollar Amount on the Moore Tornado Damage

  • Logan Layden

Joe Wertz / StateImpact Oklahoma

A man on top of a house surveying tornado damage in Moore, Okla..

Following a major disaster like the Moore tornado on May 20th, news reporters want answers, and they don’t want to wait.

How many people were killed? How many injured? Those questions can usually be addressed fairly accurately. But when it comes to figuring the cost of the storm, Oklahoma’s Insurance Department has provided estimates ranging from $500 million to $5 billion.

StateImpact has been looking into how exactly these numbers are calculated, and why they’re so inexact.