Note that this quake was not on the San Andreas - it was in the Eastern California Shear Zone, a separate fault system near Death Valley. The epicenter was about 125 miles away from LA, and almost closer to Las Vegas (which also felt this quake). The limited damage was largely because it was far away from any populated areas - the nearest cities are Ridgecrest (pop 27,000) and Trona (pop < 2000).
Also the area used be have some volcanic activity which is now limited to hot springs and geothermal plants. But you can still see a lot of lava fields when you drive there.
"Only 10 percent of California's 7 million plus homeowners have earthquake insurance – and the number has dropped by more than half since the deadly quake" (2014)
You can get an estimate for an earthquake insurance policy with the California Earthquake Authority.
I'm not clear how a CEA policy makes financial sense for a standard single-family, owner-occupied house. The only affordable plans have massive deductibles and only partial cost coverage. If "the big one" hits, it's likely that:
(a) CEA will quickly run out of money and I won't be covered anyway.
(b) The whole community will be ruined so assuming all of my family is still alive we'd best move somewhere else anyway (and a rebuild or undamaged house wouldn't sell).
(c) Some kind of government bailout or community help program will be available.
For smaller earthquakes, it's likely I'd either fail to meet my deductible or be unable to pay the non-covered portion (which has to be paid out first before they'll begin to pay for further repairs).
Am I wrong, or is there something I'm missing? I wish this weren't the case.
Different country, but for the Christchurch earthquake in 2011:
- our equivalent of CEA (EQC) did indeed run out of money, although it’s mostly reinsurance and govt backed
- insurance companies went under, because even for a small city (400k), costs ran to $40 billion
- it’s now very very expensive to get earthquake coverage, in some parts of the country you are paying multiples of what less earthquake prone parts of the country pay, so people don’t bother. so they’ll lose everything next time, and we’ll foot the bill as a country
Scale of California probably means amplification if these effects, hundreds of billions in losses.
> CEA will quickly run out of money and I won't be covered anyway.
I don’t understand why insurance companies can run out of money whenever they need to pay claims. I’m sure they know they’re going to go under, why can’t they get insurance on themselves?
I understand why people keep bring up earthquake insurance, but it's not that many of us haven't considered it. It can be expensive to the extent that you are better off reinforcing your home rather than spending any money on said insurance. "The expensive deductible related to earthquake insurance are sometimes as high as 15% of the value of the home, which has many homeowners giving the insurance a second thought."[1]
Most insurance companies bailed out of the business of earthquake insurance after Northridge because when it happens, the claims are enormous. The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake was an indirect factor that lead to the Panic of 1907 due to the high volume of insurance claims.
I think the general consensus is that you'd be better using your money to get a construction loan to brace and bolt your home to resist earthquakes. I was quoted $175/month for earthquake insurance. That translates into a $25-30k loan. You can do a lot of structural improvement for that.
When I looked into it, adding on earthquake insurance would cost more than my regular homeowners insurance, and like you said would still have a huge deductible without even covering most of my belongings
Why? So the sleazy insurance companies can deny or only pay a small percentage of your claim?? No thanks, the insurance industry has reduced itself to a rent seeking, regulatory capture machine with nearly zero value proposition for customers at this point.
There's a few articles that go into a loosely defined faulting area dubbed the Walker Lane[1][2][3] in which it's theorized that the East Pacific Rise (a rift), under the Gulf of California, may be expanding directly north. I know some geologists were surprised at first at the 7.4 Landers earthquake in 1994, and the article goes into that the Walker Lane seems to follow US 395, so I wonder if this is just a continuing extension of geologic activity associated with it.
There are so many building regulations, and grants to help older buildings meet standards that were not in place when they were built, awareness and education campaigns, and built-in procedures and policies in place that a regular California resident doesn't need to let the fear of an earthquake take over their life.
California is as prepared as any state can be for an earthquake and it is constantly looking for better ways to be prepared.
There's lots of regulations, but the regulations seem flawed by design. For example, in California at least, buildings need to be built to survive earthquakes, but not necessarily be functional.
In the event of a larger quake, you might survive the initial shock but a high percentage of your city, including new buildings will need to be torn down.
This represents a huge loss to a city in economic terms. Imagine if downtown LA lost 50% of its office buildings and apartment buildings. Compare this to Japan where buildings survive and are required to be usable. Japanese engineers are shocked at what they consider to be American substandard building codes.
Nah, there's just not a whole lot in that part of the world.
When I lived in that general area, there was a 7.1 or 7.2 and I think there was one death. IIRC, it was due to a heart attack and locals joked it was in reaction to the amount of liquor bottles broken in some liquor store because photos of the broken bottles got splashed all over the papers as one of the bigger points of damage.
A train was derailed in that quake and I think someone broke their arm but no one died because it was going unusually slow for a passenger train, having been scheduled behind a slow-moving freight train.
We had aftershocks for weeks that interfered with my sleep. Some of the aftershocks were above a 5.0.
This was also relatively remote. If it had been, say, the East Bay, where there’s high population density and lots of older homes with unreinforced masonry foundations, the situation would look a lot different.
I didn’t feel it in West LA but my cat became extremely spooked. He was in an ultra hunting mode, flat to the ground and scanning the room. I never seen him act like this especially for this duration. He wouldn’t eat treats or respond to anything.
I wonder if it was just the vibration of the ground or if there’s some other factor alerting him.
Cats can probably feel or hear the p waves, which humans usually do not notice, and which travel faster than the more noticeable (to humans) s waves.
Here's a video of a bunch of cats in a cat cafe in Japan whose sleep is interrupted by an earthquake. They all wake up and start looking around about 9 seconds before the shaking starts, probably due to sensing the p wave. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ-p9qOhBv4
Readit News
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coso_Volcanic_Field
https://earthquake-report.com/2019/07/04/moderate-earthquake...
I hope this doesn't trigger anything larger. Does anybody know if this was close enough to the fault line to possibly affect anything?
EDIT: I see they have updated the article to a 1 in 20 chance.
[1] https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ [2] https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci38443095...
https://www.sfgate.com/earthquakes/article/do-minor-quakes-p...
Wish I had come to campus early today to feel that one.
You can get an estimate for an earthquake insurance policy with the California Earthquake Authority.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/why-do-so-few-ca... [2] https://www.earthquakeauthority.com/
(a) CEA will quickly run out of money and I won't be covered anyway.
(b) The whole community will be ruined so assuming all of my family is still alive we'd best move somewhere else anyway (and a rebuild or undamaged house wouldn't sell).
(c) Some kind of government bailout or community help program will be available.
For smaller earthquakes, it's likely I'd either fail to meet my deductible or be unable to pay the non-covered portion (which has to be paid out first before they'll begin to pay for further repairs).
Am I wrong, or is there something I'm missing? I wish this weren't the case.
- our equivalent of CEA (EQC) did indeed run out of money, although it’s mostly reinsurance and govt backed
- insurance companies went under, because even for a small city (400k), costs ran to $40 billion
- it’s now very very expensive to get earthquake coverage, in some parts of the country you are paying multiples of what less earthquake prone parts of the country pay, so people don’t bother. so they’ll lose everything next time, and we’ll foot the bill as a country
Scale of California probably means amplification if these effects, hundreds of billions in losses.
I don’t understand why insurance companies can run out of money whenever they need to pay claims. I’m sure they know they’re going to go under, why can’t they get insurance on themselves?
Most insurance companies bailed out of the business of earthquake insurance after Northridge because when it happens, the claims are enormous. The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake was an indirect factor that lead to the Panic of 1907 due to the high volume of insurance claims.
[1]https://www.marketwatch.com/story/25-years-after-bay-area-qu...
The earthquake was strong enough for a payout if you were located within the zone: https://twitter.com/yourjumpstart/status/1146850926512111616
[0] http://www.earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/recent/2019/2019070...
[1] https://volcanohotspot.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/splitting-no...
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/walker-lane-move-over-san-andrea...
[3] http://www.bldgblog.com/2019/04/walker-lane/
California is as prepared as any state can be for an earthquake and it is constantly looking for better ways to be prepared.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-legi...
In the event of a larger quake, you might survive the initial shock but a high percentage of your city, including new buildings will need to be torn down.
This represents a huge loss to a city in economic terms. Imagine if downtown LA lost 50% of its office buildings and apartment buildings. Compare this to Japan where buildings survive and are required to be usable. Japanese engineers are shocked at what they consider to be American substandard building codes.
The US govt has even concluded that better and stiffer building codes would save billions a year: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.nibs.org/resource/resmgr/docs/MS_C...
When I lived in that general area, there was a 7.1 or 7.2 and I think there was one death. IIRC, it was due to a heart attack and locals joked it was in reaction to the amount of liquor bottles broken in some liquor store because photos of the broken bottles got splashed all over the papers as one of the bigger points of damage.
A train was derailed in that quake and I think someone broke their arm but no one died because it was going unusually slow for a passenger train, having been scheduled behind a slow-moving freight train.
We had aftershocks for weeks that interfered with my sleep. Some of the aftershocks were above a 5.0.
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I wonder if it was just the vibration of the ground or if there’s some other factor alerting him.
Here's a video of a bunch of cats in a cat cafe in Japan whose sleep is interrupted by an earthquake. They all wake up and start looking around about 9 seconds before the shaking starts, probably due to sensing the p wave. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ-p9qOhBv4
Dead Comment