The title to this blog post was the question asked of me yesterday by a Houston insurance defense attorney. The path of Tropical Strom Emily may give you an idea of my answer to that question.
The honest answer is nobody knows. I hope these massive destructive forces miss all of us.
I can’t foretell where the next hurricane will hit. While we opened our Texas office just before two massive hurricanes hit Texas in 2008, I do not expect similar catastrophes will strike near our two newest offices in Denver or Los Angeles anytime soon.
Still, I do note that in a July 28 article, Planning for the Big One, Yevgeniy Sverdlik wrote about California:
Undeterred by forecasts of the imminence of ‘the big one’, companies continue building data center space in the region. Players that have brought new space online last year, or are readying to come online this year, include QTS, CoreSite, Vantage and Server Farm Realty.
The region sits on the line where two tectonic plates meet: the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. As the Pacific Plate tries to move northwest and the North American Plate tries to hold it back, energy accumulates until it is unleashed in the form of an earthquake.
Between the region’s eight active faults (the points where these plates touch), cumulative probability that an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or greater will hit between 2007 and 2036 is 63%, according to the US Geological Survey.
So what is my advice? If you are in California, buy a lot of earthquake coverage. If you are in the Southeast, buy a lot of windstorm and flood coverage.
Then, listen to this song about the summer of Hurricane Camille in 1969.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eFjjO_lhf9c%3Frel%3D0
