SF Bay Area - Big One Is Past Due?

According to geologists and historians this coming October 21st will mark the 140th anniversary of the last ‘big one’ that struck on the Hayward fault in the SF Bay Area. Seems that after researching records and also from trenching going back to 1315, a major quake strikes roughly every 140 years. Earthquake insurance? Only about 5% of the folks get it. Which makes one wonder why more people don’t have it?

That’s easy to answer. In any location where earthquakes may be a problem, the insurance companies like to hedge their bets by offering a very high deductible. If I recall correctly the last time I read about earthquake insurance there was a $25k deductible.  One would think that the Feds would offer some type of protection like with flood insurance.

According to the article at SF Gate:

Quakes don’t follow timetables, of course, but “a repeat of 1868 is becoming increasingly likely with each passing year,” said Survey seismologist Thomas Brocher. He is a leader of the “1868 Alliance,” a consortium of quake experts and local officials working to persuade Bay Area residents to learn the elements of earthquake preparedness, to retrofit homes and businesses, to hold earthquake drills in every school and to keep emergency supplies on hand.

Brocher and Mary Lou Zoback, former chief scientist of the USGS earthquake hazards team and now vice president of Risk Management, noted that the Bay Area’s $165 billion forecast for losses to residential and commercial buildings far exceeds the $141 billion damage to New Orleans buildings from Hurricane Katrina.

Interesting take since it once again appears that no real early warning system is in place to actual predict when the next quake will hit. With all of the massive amounts of technology available, reality is that we must use past records and trenching to predict the next quake. Even with this, the earthquake predictions are still guess work.

Comments welcome.

Full SF Gate article is here.

[tags]sf, bay area, earthquake, predictions, technology, insurance, feds, flood,  [/tags]