GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Northern Peru was hit by a 7.0 earthquake Wednesday 24 August, centred in a remote and under-populated Amazon area. The quake was felt in the capital 600 km away and in southern Brazil. The extent of the damage is not yet known.
Scientists say there is no link between this week’s earthquakes in Peru, which has a history of strong earthquakes and on a smaller scale in Colorado in the western US and Virginia in the eastern US. The latter prompted officials to evacuate the Pentagon in nearby Washington DC, schools and several tourist attractions closed in some areas and the tall, thin, Washington monument suffered cracks at the top. It is closed to visitors indefinitely while engineers study how to repair it. The Minneapolis Star & Tribune reports that only about 5 percent of East Coast residents have earthquake insurance and that about one-third of the damages, which could be $200-300 million, are insured.
Links to other sites: CS Monitor, Denver Post, Minneapolis Star & Tribune, US government earthquake hazards programme,
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Natural catastrophes and manmade economic disasters cost the world $218 billion in 2010, more than three times the cost in 2009, Swiss Re, the Zurich reinsurer, said 29 March.
The loss of lives, 308,000 people, was the highest since 1976 and far higher than the 2009 figure of 15,000 lives lost, worldwide.
Earthquakes alone accounted for one-third of the financial cost.
A number of severe catastrophes claimed huge numbers of lives: “the deadliest event in 2010 was the Haiti earthquake in January, which claimed more than 222 000 lives. Nearly 56 000 people died during the summer heatwave in Russia. The summer floods in China and Pakistan also resulted in over 6 200 deaths”, according to Swiss Re, which insures insurance companies.
The cost to the insurance industry was $40b for natural catastrophes and $3b for manmade disasters.
Ten events at more than $1 billion each:
“The two biggest insured losses were caused by earthquakes – the February earthquake in Chile (USD 8 billion) and the September earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand (USD 4.4 billion). The third costliest event was winter storm Xynthia in Western Europe, which led to insured losses of USD 2.8 billion. Three storms in the US and two storms in Australia also generated losses of over USD 1 billion.
“Property claims from the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico are estimated at USD 1 billion. Given the complexity of the claims, the latter figure is still subject to substantial uncertainty. The overall insurance loss is higher, as liability losses are not included [in the report].”
The death toll from the earthquake 14 April in Qinghai province, China has risen to over 2,000, authorities say. The country will lower flags to half mast Wednesday 21 April to mourn the dead. Public entertainment will be banned.
The government has allocated 500 million yuan ($72m) in quake relief funds and more than $3.2m in aid from other countries has been offered.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The CEO of Geothermal Explorers, the company that was drilling as part of a Basel geothermal energy project called Deep Heat, has been cleared of wrongdoing by a court in the city. Charges were brought against Markus Haering after the company’s drilling appeared to provoke earthquakes in Basel in 2006 and early 2007.
Basel's Deep Heat project, December 2006
Update 11:35 Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Basel’s innovative geothermal energy project made world headlines when it was begun in 2001, but the city suffered a series of tremors in December 2006 that prompted fears the deep drilling may have triggered the earthquakes. The Deep Heat Mining project, designed to pull energy from the deep bedrock, was closed temporarily in early 2007, but Thursday 11 December canton Basel City officials announced that the project has officially closed.
The head of the Geothermal Explorers next week faces charges in Basel, and 20 Minutes reports that there is widespread surprise in the region that he is the only person who will have to answer criminal charges and that no cantonal or city officials have been charged in the affair.
Insurance claims against the project came to CHF9 million, reports swissinfo, but the project has ended, the official report published Thursday notes, because risk analyses have suggested further drilling could set off more earthquakes.
Sion, Valais, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) – The news about the damaging earthquakes in the mountainous area of Italy’s Abruzzo region has prompted 20 Minutes to talk to Swiss experts about the danger zone here: Valais can be expected to have a quake on the scale of the one in Italy every 425 years, they say. 20 Minutes shows the danger zone and explains what preventive measures are taken by the canton. The last earthquake at 6.5 on the Richter scale (recalculated) was in 1855 but another between Sion and Sierre in 1946 measured 6.
