This review is divided into three parts.  The first part deals with hurricane experience in the USA over the past 100 years.  The report has been produced by an erudite US analytical firm called Assured Research.  I see all their material and am regularly impressed by the thoughtful approach they take to sometimes rather complex issues.  The hurricane report has been written for interest rather than indications about the future though it’s possible to draw some tentative conclusions.

The second part deals with earthquakes and essentially represents a compilation of material which I have drawn from a number of specialist websites.  If you Google ‘earthquakes’ you will find a myriad of sites and information so perhaps you may regard my compilation as a stimulus to look further into this fascinating and sometimes terrifying subject.

The third part looks at some volcanic experience and underlines the potential impact of an eruption to cause a major catastrophe.  Along with hurricanes and earthquakes, volcanic activity can produce horrendous consequences.  These consequences may range from the destruction of Pompeii to the volcanic ash which significantly interfered with flight patterns five years ago.  My contribution relates to fears which were being expressed last year about the possibility of a volcanic eruption in Yellowstone National Park which might have caused very widespread and very serious damage.  Let’s start then with the hurricane analysis…..

Our Annual Update of Hurricane Statistics

A light year predicted, we add 100 years of historical context

• One-hundred years may not be a long period on a meteorological scale, and we don’t suggest that hurricane statistics presented in this Industry Study can supplant the valuable output of hurricane models.  They can, however, supplement what insurance professionals have learned from hurricane models.  In this, our second annual presentation of hurricane statistics, we use 100 years of hurricane statistics to reveal:
• The number of annual hurricanes is steadily rising, offset by the declining percentage striking the U.S. Consequently, the number of hurricanes making land fall has been reasonably constant over successive ten-year rolling periods.
• Category 1 hurricanes are the most frequent, but Categories 2-4 storms are equally probable based on data from the past 100 years. The percentage of annual storms reaching intense status (categories 3-5) is stable over time, but cyclical over shorter periods.
• The low hurricane forecasts for 2015 are because of the expected presence of El Niño. Forecasts for 3-5 hurricanes with one intense storm might be compared to 5-6 hurricanes and 2-3 intense storms in a ‘normal’ year. We also show hurricane probabilities by state (Figure 15).
• We delve into data on Florida. 44% of all land-striking hurricanes have hit that state with the west coast bearing the majority of the impacts. Interestingly, the intensity of storms making land fall in Florida is about the same as those impacting other states.
• The Assured Research team of dart-throwers takes on the experts. Our predictions are inside. (The full report is attached as an appendix.)

Earthquakes
For me the recent article by Joel Achenbach, writing for the Washington Post, says it all.  His review appears below, just above the explanation of the Richter scale.

What is an earthquake? (This article was written for school children)
Earthquakes are the shaking, rolling or sudden shock of the earth’s surface.  They are the Earth’s natural means of releasing stress.  More than a million earthquakes rattle the world each year. In the USA the West Coast  is most at risk of having an earthquake, but earthquakes can happen in the Midwest and along the East Coast. Earthquakes can be felt over large areas although they usually last less than one minute.

What causes an earthquake?
There are about 20 plates along the surface of the earth that move continuously and slowly past each other.  When the plates squeeze or stretch, huge rocks form at their edges and the rocks shift with great force, causing an earthquake.  Think of it this way: imagine holding a pencil horizontally.  If you were to apply a force to both ends of the pencil by pushing down on them, you would see the pencil bend.  After enough force was applied, the pencil would break in the middle, releasing the stress you have put on it.  The Earth’s crust acts in the same way.  As the plates move they put forces on themselves and each other.  When the force is large enough, the crust is forced to break.  When the break occurs, the stress is released as energy which moves through the Earth in the form of waves, which we feel and call an earthquake.  (Graphic Credit: Wheeling Jesuit University/NASA Classroom of the Future)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is a fault?
A fault is an area of stress in the Earth where broken rocks slide past each other, causing a crack in the Earth’s surface.  These are the major types of faults: dip-slip normal, dip-slip reverse, strike-slip, and oblique-slip.

What are plate tectonics?
The theory of plate tectonics is an interesting story of continents drifting from place to place breaking apart, colliding, and grinding against each other.  The plate tectonic theory is supported by a wide range of evidence that considers the Earth’s crust and upper mantle to be composed of several large, thin, relatively rigid plates that move relative to one another.  (See plate tectonic graphic above.)  The plates are all moving in different directions and at different speeds.  Sometimes the plates crash together, pull apart or sideswipe each other.  When this happens, it commonly results in earthquakes.

Nepal quake was ‘nightmare waiting to happen’
Nepal has long been bracing for the “big one” but when 50 earthquake specialists gathered in Kathmandu last week for a seminar on how to better prepare for that devastating eventuality, they had no idea how soon disaster would strike.

“I was walking through that very area where that earthquake was and I thought at the very time that the area was heading for trouble,” said James Jackson, head of the earth sciences department at Cambridge University, who was at the meeting.  The combination of ultra-high population densities, lax building regulations and rickety concrete construction has long led scientists to fear that a big quake in Kathmandu would kill tens of thousands of people.

“It’s buildings that kill people not earthquakes,” said Mr Jackson, who is also lead scientist for Earthquakes Without Frontiers, a group that tries to make Asia more able to bounce back from earthquakes like the 2005 Kashmir quake that killed 70,000 to 80,000 people in and around the city Muzaffarabad.  Mercifully, when this weekend’s quake in Nepal did strike, at magnitude 7.8 it was smaller than the 8.1 quake that struck six miles south of Mount Everest in 1934 killing 10,000 people in area of sparse population.

“It was sort of a nightmare waiting to happen,” added Mr Jackson, of the roughly 75-year cycle for major earthquakes in the region, “Physically and geologically what happened is exactly what we thought would happen.”

Earthquakes – What are the long term trends?
The outer shell of the earth is composed of a number of almost rigid “plates” that slowly move against each other.  It is this geological feature that provides the conditions for major earthquakes to occur.  Although they can occur anywhere on the planet with little warning, the most extreme earthquakes occur near the plate boundaries.  Stresses can build up at these boundaries, caused by the general movement of the plates against each other over time, which is “bottled up” at the plate boundaries.  It may then be released suddenly, in the form of an earthquake.  Several boundaries are under deep water but the effects spread for many miles, and so can be felt on land in these cases too.  Tsunamis may be triggered bringing damage to coastal communities in a wide area.  Powerful earthquakes may also initiate volcanoes to erupt in the vicinity or further afield although this is not always the case, as it depends on the state of the magma chamber at the time.

A measurement of earthquake magnitude is the Richter scale.  On a logarithmic scale this measures the size and energy released from an earthquake.  On this scale, there are usually dozens of “earthquakes” occurring daily, with a magnitude of below 2.5.  These are usually not felt by humans.  It takes a much stronger earthquake for damage to occur.  For example, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake is ten times larger than a magnitude 5.0, but it has 32 times the amount of energy released so is more likely to cause damage.

An earthquake registering between 6.0 and 6.9 could be considered fairly major.  Above 7.0, the earthquake is considered more serious, with a larger area of damage anticipated.  The two most important variables affecting earthquake damage are the intensity of ground shaking caused by the quake and the quality of the structures in the region.  The level of shaking, in turn, is controlled by the proximity of the earthquake source and the types of rocks that seismic waves pass through en route.  Thus, any loss of life is dependent on location (close to settlements etc.) as well as whether or not buildings can withstand the earth tremors.  The larger the magnitude, and the weaker the building structures, the more likely fatalities will occur.  The largest earthquake in recent history measured about 9.5 (Chile, 1960), however this did not result in the most fatalities.  People can’t stop earthquakes from happening. People can however significantly mitigate their effects by identifying hazards, building safer structures, and learning about earthquake safety.

Below is a graph showing how the number of all magnitude earthquakes has grown over recent years.  Although we are primarily concerned with long term trends for larger magnitude earthquakes in this report, it is worth noting the trend as it applies to all earthquakes, whether large or small, over a 30 years period or so from the mid-1970s. However, this trend needs to be understood in relation to the increase in seismographs.  Certainly, in the last 25 years, more lower intensity earthquakes have been noticed because of a general increase in the number of seismograph stations across the world and improved global communications.  This increase has helped seismological centres to locate many small earthquakes which were undetected in earlier decades.  Therefore, an upward trend is not unexpected in the graph, although the rise in the number of large earthquakes will be of more significance to our assessment of the trend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Graph above provided by DL Research. – http://www.dlindquist.com

 

Japan may install toilets in elevators for earthquake emergencies
The country is looking at installing toilets in elevators and providing an emergency supply of drinking water for people trapped by the nation’s frequent powerful earthquakes, an official said Wednesday.

The move comes after dozens of people were left high and dry, some for over an hour, after a 7.8 magnitude quake on Saturday that stopped lifts.

Most of the elevators automatically stopped at the nearest floor and opened their doors, but 14 were stranded between storeys.

2005 Kashmir Earthquake
On October 8, 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook the Kashmir region, along with sections of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. More than 80,000 people perished as a result of the quake, while an estimated 4 million others were left homeless.

The Kashmir earthquake took place shortly after 8:50 a.m. local time and was centered about 12 miles northeast of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Kashmir is located at the juncture of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates—the collision of which caused the formation of the Himalaya Mountains—making it prone to intense seismic activity.  The 2005 earthquake was among the worst ever to hit the region.  It caused extensive destruction in Kashmir; Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province; the western and southern regions of the Kashmir Valley and northern Pakistan.  Damage also was reported in northern India and Afghanistan.

In some places, whole sections of towns slid off cliffs and entire families were killed.  The Muzaffarabad area suffered severe devastation, and the town of Balakot in the North-West Frontier Province was almost completely destroyed.  The quake occurred just before the onset of the region’s harsh winter, exacerbating the disaster’s effects.  In addition, landslides wiped out large numbers of the region’s roads, making many of the damaged areas inaccessible to relief workers in the immediate aftermath.  In all, about 80, 000 people died as a result of the quake and an estimated 4 million others were left homeless.

From the Washington Post, April 2015 (by Joel Achenbach)
Writing about seismic risk is frustrating: The experts know that big earthquakes are going to happen, but not exactly when and where. The ensuing articles are laced with hypotheticals.  There is an airy, foamy quality to these stories; as a writer, you long for solid facts and certainties, and wonder whether any of this stuff makes a difference on the ground, in lives of actual human beings who are at risk.  For example, here’s a story I wrote five years ago:

The next Big One could strike Tokyo, Istanbul, Tehran, Mexico City, New Delhi, Kathmandu or the two metropolises near California’s San Andreas Fault, Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Or it could devastate Dhaka, Jakarta, Karachi, Manila, Cairo, Osaka, Lima or Bogota. The list goes on and on …

For years, earthquake scientists have shouted their warnings about the strong likelihood that a major quake would level an impoverished city and kill hundreds of thousands of people.  They have said, for example, that Kathmandu, where masonry structures expand so haphazardly that some eventually cantilever over narrow city streets, is every bit as vulnerable as the surrounding Himalayas are majestic.

For years, scientists have talked to me about the very high likelihood of a Kathmandu earthquake.  It happened Saturday.  The experts called it.  But being right hasn’t made them any less horrified and saddened by this disaster.  In fact, they sounded dismayed, as if overcome with a sense of powerlessness.  Tectonic forces are massive and implacable, and human societies are often poor and fragile.

If you go back to 1800, the year 1800, there was one city in the world that had a million people, and that was Beijing.  The most recent count I’ve come across is that there are 381 cities with at least a million people.  Of those cities, a lot of them are in seismically very hazardous places like Caracas, Venezuela, or Mexico City or Kathmandu.

And if you’re living in a city, and you are poor, you’re not going to worry about events that don’t happen but once every 200 years or so.

Earthquakes are innately unpredictable, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  Skittish birds and snakes are not a reliable indicator. No one knows why a small earthquake can keep breaking and turn into a 1906-style catastrophic rupture.  Sometimes they stop, sometimes they keep going.  The 2011 Japan earthquake was a 9.0 on a fault that, according to the scientific consensus, could generate only magnitude 7 and 8 earthquakes.  On a logarithmic scale, a 9 is 10 times more powerful than an 8 and 100 times more powerful than a 7.

Japan, to its credit, has prepared for earthquakes, and retains cultural memory of the 1923 earthquake and fire that devastated Tokyo.  But what happened in 2011 defied the received wisdom in Japan about where the next big one would be.

Japan has already named its next great earthquake: the Tokai earthquake.  The government has identified and delineated by law the precise affected area — a region along the Pacific coast about a hundred miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo.  After a series of small quakes in the Tokai area in the 1970s, scientists predicted that a major quake might be imminent there.  The Japanese government passed a law in 1978 mandating that preparations begin for the Tokai earthquake.

It hasn’t happened. The Big One turned out to be hundreds of miles to the north.

Here’s a prediction: There will be a huge earthquake in California. The San Andreas Fault will rupture and produce something close to a magnitude 8.0. If you had to bet, you’d wager it would be in the southernmost section, which hasn’t ruptured since about 1680. But who knows?

The seismic hazard maps are useful in designing building codes, and giving us approximations of the likelihood of major ground motion. The maps, however, are limited in their ability to tell us what will happen, and when, and where, exactly. Northridge 1994 (6.7 magnitude) happened on an unmapped fault. The world (and the Los Angeles area in particular) is undergirded by countless unmapped faults. One earthquake can shift strain to another fault that might break in an even more violent way. The Earth doesn’t operate on human timetables. Very large earthquakes can occur on hidden faults with extremely long repeat times of several thousand years or more. Just because a place doesn’t have very many earthquakes doesn’t mean it can’t have a 7.0 magnitude quake or even something stronger.

Richter magnitudes
Because of the logarithmic basis of the Richter scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; in terms of energy, each whole number increase corresponds to an increase of about 31.6 times the amount of energy released, and each increase of 0.2 corresponds to a doubling of the energy released.

Events with magnitudes greater than 4.5 are strong enough to be recorded by a seismograph anywhere in the world, so long as its sensors are not located in the earthquake’s shadow.

The following describes the typical effects of earthquakes of various magnitudes near the epicenter. The values are typical only and should be taken with extreme caution, since intensity and thus ground effects depend not only on the magnitude, but also on the distance to the epicenter, the depth of the earthquake’s focus beneath the epicenter, the location of the epicenter and geological conditions (certain terrains can amplify seismic signals).

Magnitude	Description	Average earthquake effects	Average frequency of occurrence (estimated)
Less than 2.0	Micro	Microearthquakes, not felt, or felt rarely by sensitive people. Recorded by seismographs.[16]	Continual/several million per year
2.0–2.9	Minor	Felt slightly by some people. No damage to buildings.	Over one million per year
3.0–3.9		Often felt by people, but very rarely causes damage. Shaking of indoor objects can be noticeable.	Over 100,000 per year
4.0–4.9	Light	Noticeable shaking of indoor objects and rattling noises. Felt by most people in the affected area. Slightly felt outside. Generally causes none to minimal damage. Moderate to significant damage very unlikely. Some objects may fall off shelves or be knocked over.	10,000 to 15,000 per year
5.0–5.9	Moderate	Can cause damage of varying severity to poorly constructed buildings. At most, none to slight damage to all other buildings. Felt by everyone.	1,000 to 1,500 per year
6.0–6.9	Strong	Damage to a moderate number of well-built structures in populated areas. Earthquake-resistant structures survive with slight to moderate damage. Poorly designed structures receive moderate to severe damage. Felt in wider areas; up to hundreds of miles/kilometers from the epicenter. Strong to violent shaking in epicentral area.	100 to 150 per year
7.0–7.9	Major	Causes damage to most buildings, some to partially or completely collapse or receive severe damage. Well-designed structures are likely to receive damage. Felt across great distances with major damage mostly limited to 250 km from epicenter.	10 to 20 per year
8.0–8.9	Great	Major damage to buildings, structures likely to be destroyed. Will cause moderate to heavy damage to sturdy or earthquake-resistant buildings. Damaging in large areas. Felt in extremely large regions.	One per year
9.0 and greater		Near or at total destruction – severe damage or collapse to all buildings. Heavy damage and shaking extends to distant locations. Permanent changes in ground topography.	One per 10 to 50 years

(Based on U.S. Geological Survey documents.)

Volcanoes
These quotes are taken from Robert Harris’s book “Pompeii”.

“Prior to AD 79 a reservoir of magma had accumulated beneath the volcano.  It is not possible to say when this magma chamber began to form but it had a volume of at least 3.6 cubic kilometres and was about 3 kilometres below the surface …” (Peter Francis – Volcanoes: A Planetary Perspective)

 “As magma rises from depth it undergoes a large pressure decrease at a 10 metre depth, for example, pressures are about 3 000 times the atmospheric pressure.  Such a large pressure change has many consequences for the physical properties and flow of magma.”  (Encyclopaedia of Volcanoes)

 

“The surface of a volcano ruptured shortly after noon allowing explosive decompression of the main magma body …  The exit velocity of the magma was approximately 1440 kilometres per hour.  Convection carried incandescent gas and pumice clasts to a height of 28 kilometres.  The thermal energy released during the AD 79 eruption would have been roughly 100 000 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.”  (Dynamics of Volcanism)

“During the first phase the vent radius was probably of the order of 100 metres.  As the eruption continued inevitable widening of the vent permitted still higher mass eruption rates … Progressively deeper levels within the magma chamber were tapped until after about 7 hours the more mafic grey pumice was reached.  This was ejected at about 1.5 million tonnes per second and carried by convection to maximum heights of about 33 kilometres.  (Volcanoes: A Planetary Perspective)

Many of us suffered flight delays or cancellations as a consequence of the volcanic eruption in Iceland in March/April 2010.  This is the background.

Why Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull Volcano Erupted by Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor – November 2010

The Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull (AYA-feeyapla-yurkul) burst to life in March 2010 after nearly two centuries of dormancy.  It then erupted in April, spewing a huge plume of ash that created phenomenal lightning displays, colored sunsets a fiery red across much of Europe, and forced flight cancellations for days.

As explosive as Eyjafjallajökull proved, it is actually only a moderately active volcano that is, one that erupts once every few centuries or even millennia.  “There are many such volcanoes in the world, including many on the circum-Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ volcanic belt, including volcanoes in the U.S. West, Kamchatka [in Russia] and the Andes,”  Freysteinn Sigmundsson (Volcanologist at the University of Iceland) told OurAmazingPlanet.

Eyjafjallajökull actually lies away from the rift in the earth that other Icelandic volcanoes spring from and which is ultimately responsible for the island’s existence.  Until now, it was uncertain as to whether, or how “colder,” moderately active volcanoes such as Eyjafjallajökull behaved any differently from their hotter and more active kin during eruptions, since they erupt less often for researchers to study.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eruption plume above the ice capped Eyjafjallajokull volcano, April 17, 2010. Meltwater floodpath in foreground. Credit: Eyjolfur Magnusson, University of Iceland

 

 

 

When it comes to a typical eruption of highly active volcanoes, scientists have learned over the years that magma chambers within the volcano gradually fill up beforehand and rapidly deflate as pressure is released, deforming the surface.  However, the magma chamber that deflated in Eyjafjallajökull during the explosive April eruption was not the one that filled up right beforehand.

“One of the surprises was the complexity of the plumbing system,” Sigmundsson said.  “There was not one main magma chamber active under the volcano capturing magma in 18 years of unrest preceding the eruption, as is often envisioned in models for the most active volcanoes on Earth.  Rather, two or more discrete magmatic sources were involved, with magma of different composition.”

The cause of Eyjafjallajökull’s explosive eruption seemed to be the meeting of one body of magma, made up mostly of the common volcanic rock basalt, with another type of magma within the volcano, consisting largely of silica-rich trachyandesite.

With these two volcanic eruptions in mind, separated by nearly 2 000 years, I hope you might enjoy the following piece which I wrote in the context of strong rumours that the volcano which lies beneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming was about to erupt in July/August last year.

David Newton’s Blog on Yellowstone National Park
Back in the 1970s and 1980s when I was working with the Dugdale Group at Lloyd’s we had a modest commercial relationship with the securities firm, Bache & Co.  I developed quite a good connection with the London manager who occasionally invited me to private seminars.  I remember one in particular in 1981 when the guest speaker was the noted, sometimes notorious, investment guru, Joe Granville.

Some of you in the US will probably recall his name and when I looked on the website there were a couple of quite good obituaries following his death last year.  He had an enormous following of devoted acolytes particularly among private clients.  He had a unique style which included playing the piano and making rude remarks about investment management companies, frequently referring to them as ‘bag holders’.

After he had finished making his pronouncements at the Bache meeting in 1981 he asked the small assembled group if we would like to buy seafront property in the USA at 10 cents an acre.  To a man we reached for our cheque books and in the process thought it wise to ask Joe exactly where this property was located.  The answer was ‘Nebraska’.  We looked a bit surprised, to say the least, and while we were quite happy to recognise our limitations on the geography of the USA we did suggest to Joe that Nebraska was about four states in from the West Coast.

Joe’s response was fascinating.  He referred to what is called the Jupiter Effect.  This was a rare concurrence when the nine major planets, including earth, would all appear in the same arc.  The consequence, Joe said, would be an earthquake which would destroy the San Andreas fault line and create the most enormous tidal wave which in turn would break off the whole of the western part of the USA leaving Nebraska as the seafront.  My personal scepticism was marginally undermined when one of our Names came into the office one day soon afterwards and demanded that he should be taken off all his syndicates except UK Motor.  ‘Why?’ we asked, to which the response was “the nine major planets …”  Such is the ability of man to (mis)interpret scientific data.

This brings me on to Yellowstone National Park.  I subscribe to a daily newsletter called ‘Delanceyplace’ which provides extracts from its choice of books or publications.  One of its most recent articles was an extract from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson about the enormous volcano forming the core of the Park.  Since reading that article I have Googled ‘Yellowstone’ more than once to find that the prospect of a major eruption of this volcano has been attracting a lot of material including an article in the September 4 issue of the New Yorker.  “The geysers, hot springs, mud pots and fumaroles of Yellowstone National Park are the visible face of a vast, seething ocean of molten, magma six miles deep.  The super volcano beneath Yellowstone has so far erupted three times: 2.1 million, 1.3 million and 640,000 years ago.  By the crude math of those who have a fearful cast of mind, this means that a fourth eruption is now due.”

You may like to read the whole article which is accessible online.  Doomsday predictions of a specific kind remind me of those guys whom one occasionally sees carrying billboards with the words ‘The end of the world is nigh’.  In this case, however, there is apparently a video on You Tube which has been viewed almost 1.5 million times featuring 26 bison loping along Yellowstone’s Grand Loop Road.  The author of the New Yorker article describes the scene as rather cute.  But there’s more, much more, with lots of scary forecasts.  The article concludes with the following observation “The likelihood of it actually happening in the 21^st century remains about one in a thousand according to the US Geological Survey.  So while there is little need to worry about drowning in burning lava during your trip to Yellowstone there might be a need to watch what you read before you leave for vacation.”

So, what’s the point?  As I have often said to our two girls, life is about taking risk.  I believe that if you do not take risk, you take risk.  For example, if you decide to keep your money under your ‘risk free’ mattress it will gradually be wasted away by inflation.  There is a perceived risk of driving at night in ‘violent’ Johannesburg which deters quite a number of bridge players from participating in a game which they love because they won’t go out at night.  There is a risk that your flight might be cancelled because of a volcanic eruption in Iceland which spews ash across northern Europe.  There is a risk in crossing the road, especially if you don’t look where you are going.

The business we are in is about taking risk.  Insurers make a promise to pay in the event of a legitimate claim though sometimes the legitimacy is hard to prove or disprove.  Warren Buffett likes to refer to the float which derives from the premiums paid upfront on which investment returns will be made and will contribute towards paying expenses and generating profits.  As he puts it, the goal is that the float received in any year should exceed claims.  This goal highlights the importance of accurately assessing risk/reward recognising that nature has the power to deceive and will frequently do so.

In our business we rely on underwriters analysing risk/reward, taking account of historical experience and so far as possible ‘what if’ scenarios.  These ‘what if’ scenarios need to be intelligently realistic.  This is not to say that the possibility of an eruption of Yellowstone National Park should be ignored but after careful consideration it might be entirely overlooked.  The same might be said about the possibility of Mount Teide erupting in the Canary Islands creating a tsunami which would sweep over the Atlantic to New York.  On the other hand earthquakes in California, Chile, Japan and New Zealand will never fall outside a good underwriter’s appraisal.

So, underwriters need to look where they are going and we watch over them to make sure that they do.  Those insurers who are careless about the road which they travel invariably lose their way if not ultimately their business.  Our job is, so far as possible, to make sure that they don’t.

Assured-Industry-Study-Hurricanes-May-2015