PX00114_9.JPG
San Francisco, seen here after the famous 1906 earthquake that struck the city, has more than earthquakes to worry about, just like Portland.
(The Associated Press)
Lloyd's of London must not have a subscription to The New Yorker.
You and I are still freaking out about the massive Northwest earthquake that's going to turn everything west of I-5 into oatmeal, as vividly described a couple of months ago by journalist Kathryn Schulz. "By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable," she wrote in The New Yorker.
But Lloyd's, focusing strictly on financial impact, has more prosaic worries.
Like the stock market. And the oil market. And hackers.
The famed British insurer analyzed "the economic exposure from 18 threats over 10 years from 2015" and found that Portland is vulnerable to $10.69 billion in potential loses from manmade and natural threats, putting it 18th among U.S. cities for economic risk.
The Rose City's top economic risks are a market crash ($2.72 billion), an oil price shock ($1.70 billion), a cyber attack ($1.52 billion), a flood ($1.41 billion) and human pandemic ($0.91 billion).
Earthquake comes in way down at eighth on the list, at $0.30 billion, just above solar storm and power outage. It lands below the financial risk from volcano (sixth, $0.72 billion) and drought (seventh, $0.54 billion). What does Kathryn Schulz think about that?
To come up with its risk assessments, Lloyd's turned to the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies at the University of Cambridge's business school. The Centre ran the numbers on 18 potentially catastrophic threats on the gross domestic product of 301 major cities around the world.
Dig into the data and rankings yourself at a special city-risk website Lloyd's set up.