Zurich Insurance Group and Swiss Re have announced that Zurich has obtained, through its subsidiaries Zurich American Insurance Company and Zurich Insurance Company Ltd, a 3-year $270 million catastrophe excess of loss reinsurance protection from Lakeside Re III Ltd. to cover the risk of earthquakes in specific territories in North America.
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Guatemalans fearing aftershocks huddled in the dark and frigid streets of this mountain town wrapped in blankets early Thursday, while others crowded inside its hospital, the only building left with electricity after a powerful earthquake killed at least 48 people and left dozens more missing.
Crews worked through the night in San Marcos, searching rubble for survivors and more dead following the magnitude 7.4 quake that struck Wednesday near Guatemala’s border with Mexico.
In the town of San Cristobal Cochu, firefighters picked at a collapsed house trying to dig out 10 members of one family, including a 4-year-old child, who were buried, fire department spokesman Ovidio Perez told the radio station Emisoras Unidas.
Volunteers carrying boxes of medical supplies began arriving in the area in western Guatemalan late Wednesday.
Eblin Cifuentes, a 26-year-old law student, and a group of his classmates already were collecting medical supplies as part of a school drive to provide aid for the only hospital in San Marcos, a poor, mainly indigenous mountain area of subsistence farms. When the quake hit, the group decided to bring everything they had collected.
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A building permit consultant in California has been hired as San Francisco’s first earthquake safety czar.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported Patrick Otellini is a certified building inspector who served on the mayor’s task force examining soft-story building risks.
So-called soft-story buildings have a garage or storefront on the first floor, making them prone to collapse in a major quake.
As director of earthquake safety, Otellini will implement a 30-year plan to reduce the city’s most dangerous risks in a future earthquake, including retrofitting soft-story buildings, private schools and some concrete buildings.
Otellini will be paid between $108,000 and $138,000 a year.
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