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Earthquakes: Southern homeowners
beware, it's not just for California anymore
By Michael
D. Larson • Bankrate.com
 While
the aboveground threat from weather events is undeniably serious,
it often pales in comparison to the threat from below. Earthquakes
cause massive damage. The 1994 quake in Northridge, Calif., was
the second-largest U.S. catastrophe with claims totaling $12.5 billion.
"The simple fact is, no area of California is
immune from earthquakes,'' says Mark Leonard, a spokesman for the
California Earthquake Authority. The organization, funded by premiums
and member insurance companies, sells policies to state residents.
Private insurers in California are also required
to sell their own policies if they don't participate in CEA, Leonard
says.
But people living on the West Coast aren't the
only ones that should be concerned about earthquakes. Residents
of Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas also face
a possible threat from shaky ground. The New Madrid seismic
zone runs across the five states where they border the Mississippi
River.
Though not as infamous as California's San Andreas
fault, the New Madrid zone has a 40 percent to 63 percent chance
of causing a quake measuring 6.0 or greater on the Richter scale
sometime during the next 15 years, according to the Center for Earthquake
Research and Information at the University of Memphis in Tennessee.
Rather than purchase separate earthquake plans,
residents in the New Madrid region usually obtain coverage as an
endorsement to their standard homeowners policy, says Ruth Gastel
of the Insurance
Information Institute.
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