Guy Carp releases tsunami risk report
Southwest Taiwan would be at the highest risk of being hit with a tsunami, if a magnitude 9.4 earthquake along the Manila Trench were to occur.
This is according to Guy Carpenter’s latest report, providing an in-depth study of the tsunami risk from a moment magnitude 9.4 earthquake along the Manila Trench, including the Hong Kong area, Taiwan, Kota Kinabalu, Macau, Manila and Vietnam.
The worst case scenario predicts the highest risks in southwest Taiwan, specifically, up to four meters at the Port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s principal port and the sixth largest container port in the world.
Guy Carpenter explained that for around the past four and a half centuries, the Manila Trench has been building up enormous amounts of energy as the Philippine Sea plate and the Eurasian plate continue to push against one another.
Mike Owen, head of analytics for Asia-Pacific, said: “The Tohoku tsunami event of 2011 and the previous severe events in Chile in 2010 and the Indian Ocean in 2004 have proved that tsunami is a very real and potentially very severe peril with the capability to cause devastation over a broad area.
“This is particularly the case for the Asia Pacific region where events triggered almost anywhere around the Pacific Rim can strike multiple countries. We undertook the study detailed in this report to help our clients to better understand the potential risk posed to key areas of insurance concentration within the region.”
The five most important trans-ocean tsunamis of the twentieth century all occurred in the Pacific Ocean.
