Now might be a great time to secure insurance for a building with wood frames, particularly those properties along the west coast.
A seismic engineer from California warned the BC government through a series of emails that “unexpected” severe damage to wood-frame housing in last year’s earthquake in Japan could happen again in the province.
Learn more about earthquake insurance here.
The emails were obtained by Postmedia under a freedom of information request to the BC government,
Vancouver Sun reported.
Peter Yanev, who serves as an earthquake engineering advisor to the World Bank, told provincial government officials handling emergency management that he was particularly worried since west coast Canadian wood-frame construction techniques are very similar to the ones used in Kumamoto, where an earthquake struck in April, 2016. It did not help that the terrain of both areas was also strikingly similar.
The Kumamoto earthquake resulted in 50 fatalities. The disaster also injured another 3,000 and displaced approximately 44,000 individuals from their homes.
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Yanev, who emailed 10 officials, said that certain schools, a hospital, and newer portions of an airport in Kumamoto all managed to fare well in successive earthquake events, including one at magnitude seven. He, however, cautioned that the record damage wrought by the Kumamoto quake was such that it could shatter many of the preconceptions the insurance industry has about handling tremors, especially regarding the performance of wood frames during earthquake events.
In an earlier email to provincial officials, dated May 15, 2016, Yanev said that minor ground settlement, particularly in hills nearest to the fault in Kumamoto, displaced foundations, leading to heavy damage once the tremors hit. He cautioned that a similar earthquake could occur in areas like Vancouver, Victoria, Portland and Seattle.
“It’s maybe time to re-evaluate wood-frame houses and do something more,” Yanev told
Vancouver Sun in a telephone interview. “And it only gets more important as you get to multi-family large buildings.”
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