CEA Says It Could Pay All Claims if San Francisco 1906 Quake Hit Today

The California Earthquake Authority is taking the opportunity to tout its financial strength on the 110-Year anniversary of 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

CEA, a not-for-profit publicly managed organization that provides residential earthquake insurance, said it would be able pay all covered claims if San Francisco 1906 Earthquake reoccurred today, and the authority estimates it would pay roughly $7 billion in covered residential claims for resulting structure damage alone.

The April 18 magnitude-7.9 quake was felt by more than 2 million households from Eureka to Salinas.

Independent modeling estimates $175 billion in total residential damage of all types from a 1906-quake reoccurrence, $15 billion of it covered by insurance.

However, since only 10 percent of Bay Area residents with home insurance have bought a separate policy to cover their earthquake damage, that 1906-event reoccurrence would leave an uninsured gap of some $160 billion, according to CEA.

“CEA has more than enough financial strength to pay all our policyholders’ covered claims, whether they own or rent, if the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake reoccurred today,” CEA CEO Glenn Pomeroy said in a statement.

CEA estimates the average cost to rebuild a house in the 19-county area that would be shaken by a repeat of the San Francisco 1906 Earthquake at about $520,000. In the nine-county Bay Area, it’s higher, roughly $555,000. For the remaining 10 counties, the estimate is $405,000.

Structural engineers anticipate that older houses would be harder hit by the shaking. CEA expects about half of its policyholders with pre-1940 houses would experience damage exceeding 15 percent of the cost of a total rebuild.

Topics Catastrophe Claims