Business Impacts Of The Northridge Earthquake
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Date
1996
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Disaster Research Center
Abstract
Description
The Northridge earthquake of January 17, 1994 killed 57 people
and injured an estimated 10,000. When all the claims are finally
processed, the costs of repairing earthquake damage and providing
relief to victims will probably exceed $30 billion, including $12-
15 billion in insured losses, making that event the most costly
disaster in U. S. history. The number of households and businesses
that suffered losses in the Northridge earthquake far exceeded the
size of the victim population in other recent major disasters in
the U. S., including Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The assistance effort launched after the earthquake was the
largest ever undertaken for a U. S. disaster. Applications to the
Federal Emergency Management Agency for various forms of housing
assistance totaled well over half a million. In the year following
the earthquake, over 50,000 businesses applied to the U. S. Small
Business Administration for disaster loans, and over $1.3 billion
in loans had been paid out. This paper focuses on the immediate and longer-term impacts
the earthquake had on businesses in the Greater Los Angeles region.
The data reported here are based on a survey that the Disaster
Research Center conducted with a representative, randomly-selected
sample of businesses in the cities of Los Angeles and Santa Monica, two jurisdictions that were particularly hard-hit in the
earthquake. The paper discusses the direct impacts and losses
businesses experienced in the earthquake; the ways in which the
disaster affected the operations of the businesses studied,
including patterns of business interruption; earthquake
preparedness measures undertaken by businesses, both prior to and
after the disaster; and business recovery one-and-a-half years
after the event.
Keywords
Northridge Earthquake, Los Angeles, Santa Monica