EARTHQUAKE ANALYSIS
August 1st, 2005
BY ALAN OSBORNEARTHQUAKE insurance is an odd business in that the human scale of a disaster is sometimes wildly in excess of the economic losses and the latter in turn often far exceed the level of cover and therefore claims. The Asian tsunami at the end of last year for instance is estimated to have caused more than 310,000 deaths but total damages will amount to only US$14 billion, just a fraction of the US$132 billion losses caused by the 1995 earthquake at Kobe in Japan. The chief reason is the poverty of the affected countries, which meant both that little ...
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