Damages, death toll still mounting from New Zealand earthquake
The death toll and damage estimates both continue to rise in the wake of the February 22 earthquake that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand.
As of press time on February 28, the official death toll is 147 but area police say that the final toll could be more than 200.
Insurers and catastrophe modelers are attempting to estimate insured losses. AIR Worldwide is estimating insured losses of between NZ $5 billion – $11.5 billion (USD $3.5 billion to $8 billion). These estimates account for insured physical damage to property (residential, commercial and industrial) for structures and contents as well as direct business interruption losses.
A Guy Carpenter catastrophe update says the economic impact is expected to be far greater than that of the September magnitude 7.1 quake, although a Bank of New Zealand representative said that trying to put a figure to the losses at the present time was foolish. Prime Minister John Key said that he would not rule out estimates as high as NZD16 billion (USD $12 billion) for the total economic loss.
New Zealand’s Earthquake Commission (EQC) will treat the February 22 quake as separate from the event in September 2010.
“From EQC’s perspective, for insurance and reinsurance purposes, this is a new event even though scientists have advised it is an aftershock to the September 4 earthquake. All new damage and worsened existing damage is being treated as a new claim. Except for emergency repairs, we will be matching new claims with existing claims and when we can start assessing and reassessing again,” said EQC chief executive Ian Simpson in a statement.
The EQC said that it expects the 182,000 claims from the September earthquake to be reassessed.
The EQC said that 10,000 claims from the most recent earthquake have already been received, with about 25 percent of those indicating that their homes are either uninhabitable or not weatherproof or both. The EQC says that its modeling indicates that it can expect at least another 100,000 claims relating to this quake.
New Zealand’s Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee also said that he expects the cost of re-building Christchurch alone will be more than NZD$10 billion (USD $7.5 billion).
The EQC was established by the Government in 1945 to provide earthquake and war damage cover for purchasers of fire insurance. Later, cover for other natural disasters was included and, later still, cover for war damage dropped. The modern EQC is a Government-owned Crown Entity.
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