Tag Archives: earthquake

Delay, Deny, Defend: Why insurance companies don’t pay claims

Posted on March 25, 2023 by

This is a post about disaster insurance, and our own nightmare experience in dealing with the insurance company after our house burned down in the 1991 Oakland California firestorm.  Plus a book review of Feinman’s 2010 book “Delay, Deny, Defend: … Continue reading →

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Alaskan tsunamis threaten even California

Posted on November 25, 2021 by

Preface. A 9.1 magnitude earthquake in Alaska send a tsunami all the way to the California coast  and cause at least $10 billion in damage, forcing at least 750,000 people to evacuate flooded areas, destroy port facilities in the Bay … Continue reading →

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Earthquakes in California could cost over $200 billion dollars

Posted on February 14, 2019 by

Preface. The figures below don’t do justice to the harm an earthquake would do.  There is $1.9 trillion dollars of property at risk from earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay Area, where a catastrophic earthquake on the Hayward Fault would … Continue reading →

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Book review: the politics of California’s central valley levees

Posted on July 7, 2018 by

Preface. This is a book review of Robert Kelly’s “Battling the Inland Sea”.  But it is much more than that, better than any book I know if explaining the human nature of “conservatism vs liberalism”.  It drives me nuts that … Continue reading →

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Tokyo earthquake will cost somewhere from $1 to $4 trillion and likely soon

Posted on July 6, 2016 by

If a disaster is capable of crashing the world financial system, an earthquake in Tokyo is surely one of them. Tokyo, with over 33 million people, is the epicenter of finance and politics in Japan. In geologist Peter Hadfield’s 1995 … Continue reading →

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Cascadia subduction zone 9.0 earthquake will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and many lives

Posted on July 5, 2016 by

[ Would a several hundred billion dollar earthquake shake the global financial system enough to bring on a world-wide depression?  It’s not just the costs of repair, but the indirect costs, such as destruction of the Ports of Seattle and … Continue reading →

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Extreme Events. CEC 2011. Variable distributed generation from solar and wind increase the chance of large blackouts

Posted on January 16, 2015 by

Morgan, M., et al.   (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Electric Power Research Institute, BACV Solutions, Southern Company, CIEE, University of Alaska – Fairbanks, and KEMA). 2011. Extreme Events. California Energy Commission. Publication number: CEC-500- 2013-031. Figure 18: BLACKOUT … Continue reading →

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