Insured losses from this season’s bushfire catastrophes are continuing to climb while cooler weather and rain has suppressed fires burning in East Gippsland and NSW.

The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) says losses from the catastrophe first declared in November have reached $1.9 billion from 23,362 claims, surpassing the $1.76 billion in losses from Black Saturday in 2009, based on normalised dollars

The estimate for fires that have burned in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and SA has risen from a January 23 figure of $1.65 billion.

Rain has swept across parts of NSW and Victoria and brought cooler weather over the past 10 days, dousing and containing fires.

“In what has been a very traumatic, exhausting and anxious bushfire season so far, for the first time this season all bush and grass fires in NSW are now contained,” the NSW Rural Fire Service said on Thursday.

Rain and cooler weather has also supressed fires across East Gippsland, although pockets of unburnt fuel may continue to burn, VicEmergency says.

ICA declared its first bushfire season catastrophe in September when unusually early fires in northern NSW and Queensland caused losses of $37 million. Further fires in October led to additional losses of $19 million.

Australia’s worst bushfire disaster by insurance losses remains the Ash Wednesday catastrophe in 1983, which destroyed some 3700 buildings.

The fires in Victoria and SA in February that year caused combined losses of $2.3 billion, calculated on normalised dollars.