MoneyWe saw the locations of the quakes within an hour (USGS on blogroll at right) of their occurrence and realized the only focus would be headlines and human interest stories. Here's Artemis with more:
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July 8
California quakes immaterial to reinsurance, but not baked into valuations
California has been hit by a series of earthquakes with the two largest being the magnitude 6.4 quake that struck on Thursday and a more significant magnitude 7.1 on Friday, both of which struck the Ridgecrest City area of the state.
Thursday’s magnitude 6.4 earthquake was said to have seen as many as 2,000 policyholders of earthquake insurance coverage provided by the California Earthquake Authority (CEA) exposed to strong shaking.
Friday’s magnitude 7.1 quake was stronger and shaking hit a wider area, with more damage reported as well. It struck at a shallow depth of just 0.9km, which meant the ground movements were likely more severe than Thursday’s event.
However, while there are damage reports from Friday’s magnitude 7.1 event, the impacts are expected to be minimal, both on an economic basis as well as to the insurance or reinsurance sector.
Friday’s earthquake was given a 25% chance of resulting in economic losses above $100 million and an 8% chance that the costs would exceed $1 billion.Attuned as we might be to the sadness in the personal recollections, the liquor store that was struck by the second earthquake just hours after the cleanup of the broken bottles from the first stands out, we can't cover everything.
Even combined, the damage from the two largest quakes to occur is not expected to be particularly impactful on an economic or insured basis.
Reinsurance layers will not come into play it seems, given the relatively sparsely populated nature of the region of California where the earthquakes struck....MORE
Besides, the teledildonics and Arctic fox stories were already in the queue
