Earthquake Insights


The August 2011 earthquake in Virginia offered lessons concerning ground motion and emergency preparedness.


“This was really the first larger-magnitude event on the eastern coast where we’ve had good instrumentation to record both the main shock and the aftershock to better understand seismic sources and also ground motions.”


Laurie Johnson, Lexington Insurance


Waves from the 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Virginia in August 2011 rippled through 40 states, validating what has been long understood: seismic waves attenuate — or grow weaker — much more slowly in the types of soil and rock in the eastern U.S. than they do in the west. The analysis of the Virginia earthquake will yield a great amount of data to expand that understanding, and will likely influence future catastrophe models.


The Virginia earthquake also provided important lessons for emergency preparedness managers. In a region considered more vulnerable to hurricanes and terrorist attacks than earthquakes, many emergency preparedness personnel were ill prepared to respond to an earthquake. For example, many schoolchildren hadn’t learned basic protective measures, like “duck, cover and hold,” and evacuation procedures in many commercial buildings up and down the east coast were not suitable for an earthquake.


Copyright © 2012 by A.M. Best Company, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this report may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means; electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27