The Great Debate UK
from Reuters Investigates:
Japanese quake cost bad, but far from the worst
By Ben Berkowitz
The March 11 Great Tohoku Earthquake in Japan was a tragic disaster of historic proportions -- but from a purely financial standpoint it pales in comparison. (For a special report on insurers, click here.)
Estimates are still coming in but it seems likely the quake will end up ranking as the costliest of the last generation in insured losses, surpassing even the Northridge earthquake that struck southern California in 1994. (The one that collapsed a number of major freeways, by way of reference).
But looking back historically, it is dwarfed by two temblors in particular -- the New Madrid quake of 1812 and the San Francisco quake of 1906. If those events happened today, they would each cause nearly $100 billion in *insured* losses, to say nothing of their total economic impact.
Great Tohoku comes in fourth on that all-time list, assuming the higher end of AIR Worldwide's loss estimate.
from Reuters Investigates:
Is a 10 percent chance of disaster too high for a nuclear power station?
Kevin Krolicki has another alarming special report from Japan today challenging the assertion that the disaster facing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was beyond expections.
The report quotes Tokyo Electric's own researchers who did a study in 2007 on the risk of tsunamis:
from Reuters Investigates:
Poor Haiti, again
By Pascal Fletcher
If any country deserves the description "blighted", or a "blot on the conscience of the world", it is surely Haiti, that pocket of poverty lying in the blue Caribbean just two hours flying time from the richest country on the planet.
Less than 10 months since a huge earthquake jolted the small but densely populated nation of 10 million people, toppling brick homes like cards in the hilly capital Port-au-Prince and killing more than half a million souls, a deadly cholera epidemic is now killing more Haitians by the dozen as an aghast world looks on in another paroxysm of sympathy.
