Would you rather live in Hurricane country or Earthquake country?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've lived in Florida and California. Earthquakes. So much less drama about them. They take up so much less time and thought.

+1. I was in the 1989 Bay Area earthquake and Hurricane Frances. Major catastrophic earthquakes are so few and far between. We grew up always thinking the Big One is coming and it never did after 1989. Damaging hurricanes are more predictable but last a heck of a lot longer, cause a ton of damage and are much more frequent. I'd be much more concerned moving to CA with the wildfires, rolling blackouts, mudslides, etc than a major earthquake.

+1. I'm from the SF area and remember the Loma Prieta quake clearly (it was my birthday) but it's the wild fires that really killed any plan to move back to CA. The Santa Rosa fires made me sick to my stomach to read about; DH doesn't even want to vacation there because of the fires. I'll stay here where we only worry about terrorist attacks

[Anonymous]

Question for those who have lived in CA- What about the fires? Is that a thing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Someone above posted that they'd take quakes because it likely would affect you "once in a lifetime." Huh. There are quakes happening ALL the time off the west coast and on land as well, just not necessarily ones you feel. I saw this for myself when I had a work visit to the US Geological Survey in SF a few years after Loma Prieta. The seismologists gleefully pointed out that there was a quake going on just off the coast from where we were at that moment. And they noted that though they get better and better all the time at predicting quake possibilities, they cannot ever guarantee they'd be able to predict a large quake.

Yes, they happen all of the time, but they basically are total non-events. Except once in a lifetime. Maybe twice if you are unlucky.

I grew up in a place with neither and was pretty freaked out about the idea of earthquakes when I moved to California. I lived there for 15 years (both LA and bay area) and only even felt 3-4 earthquakes, and they were super small. Nothing fell off the wall. I was not affected by them, or by any quake. I do expect if I lived there longer, I would have eventually experienced a "big one" that would have caused damage locally. Even then, I lived & worked in seismically safe buildings, so risk of serious impact is low.

In the mentioned Loma Prieta (SF area) quake, 63 people died. In the Northridge (LA are) quake, about the same. These are the worst recent quakes. These seem similar to the worst hurricanes. Katrina had many more (on par with the 1906 SF quake), but there were other factors that made that especially bad. https://www.statista.com/statistics/236725/earthquakes-with-the-most-fatalities-in-the-us/

The wildfires have been pretty terrible though, especially with the preventative power shut offs on high risk days and bad air quality if a fire occurs somewhere in the distance. This would be a far greater deterrent.

[Anonymous]

Grew up in Alaska. Earthquakes 100%. Hurricanes seem to happen all the time. Earthquakes do too, and they can be freaky but are rarely super serious. The last destructive quake in Anchorage was a few years ago and caused a fair bit of property damage but I don't think anyone died. Prior to that one, there hadn't been a huge earthquake since the 60s and all of the buildings have been built do a different code since then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question for those who have lived in CA- What about the fires? Is that a thing?

Yes. Even if your house is not directly at risk (you could easily buy a house that is not), there have been WEEKS where the air quality was terrible. This has happened most years, for the last 5 years. Kids can't play outside. They close school sometimes. Some places had power shut off for several days as prevention. There are limited strategies to prevent it. Taking out non-native fire torch eucalyptus trees is often floated, but it probably isn't realistic. (Maybe we should rake our forrests?)

It would be pretty tolerable if it were once every many years, but it is becoming a thing, and probably will be worse due to climate change. I think it used to be more infrequent.

[Anonymous]

Earthquakes for sure! I grew up along a “very active” fault line in Oregon and only had one earthquake in the 8 years we lived there. It was mostly no big deal.

We also lived in Santiago Chile for awhile. While we lived there, we had a 8.3 magnitude earthquake that was followed by multiple 7.0 aftershocks. Because they get so many earthquakes there, the building codes are such that they can withstand that type of earthquake action without major damage. All the tall buildings were swaying with the movement but none of them fell down.

[Anonymous]

CA come with more than earthquakes...mudslides, wildfire, tsunami.

So I’d pick hurricane.

[Anonymous]

Wildfires are the scariest.

[Anonymous]

And even if you aren’t living in a current wildfire, the city often shuts off all electricity to try and prevent wildfires. Our family that lives outside of SF went through ten days of no electricity last fall as prevention. You couldn’t pay me to move to CA.

[Anonymous]

Hurricane

[Anonymous]

Hurricane. At least you have time to prepare and it's not a surprise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question for those who have lived in CA- What about the fires? Is that a thing?

Yes that’s a thing, but most places can evacuate with plenty of time. Only small, one way out towns in the hills really get trapped.

I would never let my property insurance lapse or be underinsured in San Diego county. Earthquake insurance on the other hand is very expensive and doesn’t usually cover everything. Many people do not carry earthquake insurance since it’s not required

[Anonymous]

Hurrincane. You get advance notice.

[Anonymous]

I live in earthquake country. It's what I'm used to.

[Anonymous]

If we are talking California, I think the question is definitely hurricanes vs. wildfires, which occur with far more frequency than noticeable quakes. I choose hurricanes for that one.