Hurricane Irene has landed a solid punch on North Carolina, but it isn't causing the widespread catastrophic damage that had been feared just two days ago, according to disaster experts.

But that doesn't mean the Northeast will be similarly spared. North Carolinians are practiced at weathering hurricanes and fighting off floodwaters. Further north, fewer homes have been tested by sustained hurricane-force winds and the ground is already saturated by days of heavy rain.

"The Northeast can't rest easy," said Jose Miranda of disaster-modeling company Eqecat Inc. "When all is said and done, I think this will be remembered more as a Northeast storm than a North Carolina storm."

Currently, North Carolinians are enduring sustained 85 mile-an-hour winds near the hurricane's center. The wind is causing roof tiles to fly loose and siding to peel away, and the heavy rains are making it easier for gusts to pull down trees.

Such damage will prove costly to repair. But it isn't as expensive as replacing an entire home, and so far there have been no widespread reports of houses being entirely obliterated by the wind or water, Miranda said.

"So far damage is lighter than expected--a lot of power outages and some flooding," said E. Stuart Powell Jr., a vice president at Independent Insurance Agents of North Carolina, early Saturday afternoon.

If such early reports hold true, the impact to the insurance industry in North Carolina will be less than initially feared. Insurers have sometimes lost $10 billion or more on a single hurricane; the record remains 2005's Hurricane Katrina, which cost private insurers more than $40 billion.

For North Carolina, "there will be significant damages, but certainly not of the magnitude we saw from Floyd," Miranda said.

Floyd caused insured losses of $1.4 billion in North Carolina when it struck the state in 1999, according to the Insurance Information Institute. The figure excludes the $463 million paid by the federal government's National Flood Insurance Program.

Storm surge, the term for the ocean water pushed inland by a hurricane, was mitigated somewhat by low tides in North Carolina, said Matthew Nielsen, of disaster-modeling company Risk Management Solutions Inc.

"The worst of the storm surge appears to be over," he said.

Flooding in North Carolina will be caused more by water flowing out to the sea than the other way around, Nielsen said. His firm was monitoring flood conditions on the Pamlico, Neuse and Roanoke rivers.

Insurers like Allstate Corp. (ALL), Travelers Cos. (TRV) and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. have positioned disaster-response teams along the east coast so they can begin sending adjusters to the site of damaged homes as soon as Irene passes by.

State Farm is the largest home insurer in the states in Irene's path by premium revenue. Allstate ranks second and Liberty Mutual Group is third, according to data collected by SNL Financial.

-By Erik Holm and Leslie Scism, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2891; erik.holm@dowjones.com

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