According to Andres Piirsalu, board member at the Estonian Motor Insurance Bureau (LKF), owners of comprehensive or property insurance policies should first contact their insurance company, which will typically cover damages caused by natural phenomena.

"Damages caused by natural disasters are nothing out of the ordinary; that's standard insurance," he confirmed.

He does, however, consider it unlikely that damages will be claimed against the city or, for example, the owner of a parking lot.

"To do that, there must be some very clear link that the damages were caused by a specific person, and in the case of natural disasters, it's difficult to see that way," Piirsalu explained. "Those damages were still in fact caused by a natural disaster."

The majority of the parking lots in Tartu to flood on Tuesday are managed by Europark.

"Car owners should have comprehensive insurance that covers such incidents," said Europark Estonia CEO Karol Kovanen. "If it turns out that someone else is at fault, then let's hope that the latter has liability insurance. And if they ultimately don't, then they will have to pay out of pocket."

Thus far, Estonia has remained relatively unaffected by climate change-related disasters, but there is no reason to believe that will remain the case.

"If such events do in fact become more frequent, there might come a time when insurance premiums in Estonia will go up," Piirsalu noted.

Kovanen, meanwhile, said that no one in Estonia is currently prepared for a situation where a month's worth of rain falls in less than half an hour.

"Stormwater drainage systems and pump systems are never designed for the amounts of precipitation we're now experiencing," Kovanen explained.

"As cities are paved, the ground cannot absorb water," he continued. "And so it happens that instead of the water draining away from us as it should, the entire city's water starts to come up from underground and blows manhole covers off, and the sewer system that should be draining water away ends up directing all that water into our parking lot."

Tartu city officials confirm that although the Riia tänav overpass had been rebuilt with extra capacity, it isn't possible to quickly drain water away in such heavy rains.

"The streets are built according to code, and with even greater drainage capacity," highlighted Rein Haak, head of Tartu's City Maintenance Department. "If it seems as though something was left undone below the overpass – it wasn't. If anyone wants to check, these things are very prescriptive and even exceed those standards."

He added that the easiest way to deal with unexpected flooding is to build an early warning system.

"We are already starting talks with providers of such electronic systems to see whether it would be possible to install a monitoring system there and then automatically shut Riia tänav down once the water level has reached a certain height," Haak said.

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