Earth has no timers. If stress in rocks induced by movement of plates is released by small quakes, there are no big ones. If no small quakes for a “long time”, stress accumulates and the release is a big one.
Anyway, as the podcast shared by bowlie and what Urs Max mentioned, earthquake damages are soooooo large that buying extra insurance coverage under current conditions won’t help much in case of trouble. New plans have to be developed.
Back to earthquakes, I guess the largest question in Basel is not about if houses will have a few cracks, but: how earthquake resistant are industrial facilities? Imagine having a couple of these events simultaneously just after infrastructure and communications are damaged, and population startled by a quake: https://www.bafu.admin.ch/bafu/en/ho…-accident.html
The standard earthquake insurance for, for example, Basel Stadt, puts you into a "earthquake-insurance-pot" with all others affected. They apportion out the same amount to everyone, so your house may, or may not, have enough to be rebuilt in the event of a big shake and everything falls down.
I'm opting for additional insurance, which isn't cheap, + 1000chf per year on top of the normal insurance. This is supposed to be able to fully rebuild a house, in case of a big one, and in case you want to go back there. The insurer I'm with is GVB.
But of course, that big shake may never happen....
yes, i saw the cantonal provisions, which don't seem sufficient and may have issues with payout if the big one comes. that's partly the reason why i was looking at parametric insurance: to avoid dealing with loss adjusters when there are potentially thousands of other houses that need to be assessed at the same time.
i'm surprised that it is so expensive. i'd assume that fire damage is far more likely and so would expect quake insurance to be less than that.
My insurerer is Axa. Less than 200 francs a year. The rebuild cover is stated and is index linked.
Frankly, if the big one hits, being insured will probably be the least of my issues! I'm more concerned about the mediums ones causing cracking etc. That's why I've bought it.
With the construction going on around, the builders have (through an independent company) surveyed our house, so that if we claim any ill-effect it'll be verifiable. If construction has a risk of causing structural damage, I'm sure that an earthquake 5.5-6.0 could.
Just a coincidence in the timing because a work like this takes several months, even years.
The Swiss Seismological Service (SES) launched a new seismic risk model. Keyword here is risk understood as people and property exposed to earthquakes.
The risk map is nice, but quite hard to find your home in there. So, there’s this online tool from SES where you pinpoint the location of the building of interest. This provides input on earthquake hazard and soil properties. Then there’s a question on number of levels in the construction. Finally, date of construction because that provides info on the building regulations used to design the construction. I’d be amazed if insurance companies are not using this or a very similar database/tool: http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/en/knowled…ake-risk-tool/
Of course I ran the script for the place I live Results are reasonable, low earthquake hazard in Aargau plains close to the Aare. High amplification by local subsoil (thick fine soil deposited by glaciers long ago), and very low vulnerability (building built on 2017-2018). Combine these 3 variables with some weight to each one of them and there’s a score:
PS: if people (buyers of real estate) were rational, this would have an impact on prices. Of course, fully informed rational actors are mythical creatures like unicorns. Old constructions should automatically be sold at discount, but no…they have “charm”, “character” and other adjectives that should be used for people, not objects.
Please note the measuring scale is "the Swiss average", which is already low compared to other seismic zones around the world.
Anyway, the combination of thick unconsolidated subsoil (silt, clay, sand) and older buildings will be above average even if the absolute value of average is low.
As a home owner in Zurich canton you have to have building insurance though the Kanton (GVZ Gebäudeversicherung Kanton Zürich), and they cover earthquakes under Naturgefahren…
No. "Currently, only the Canton of Zurich insures earthquake damage to buildings under the compulsory fire and natural hazards insurance (as at March 2023)"