People who feel that their days are getting shorter and basic necessities like paper are more expensive have an unlikely whipping boy: the Chilean earthquake.
The effects of the tremblor include Concepcion moving 10 feet closer to the sea, Earth’s days shrinking by 1.26 millionths of a second, Chilean wine becoming rarer and the country, which is the world’s largest wood pulp producer, shuttering production, as reported in The Week.
But these minor inconveniences don’t take away from the terrible magnitude of the event. It is the fifth strongest recorded in the last century. As of March 5, more than 800 people were reported killed. Although it was 500 times bigger than the January quake in Haiti, the death toll was much lower because of Chile’s advanced building codes, according to a report in The Sacramento Bee.
The damage keeps coming from more than 20 aftershocks have hit Chile — one as significant as 6.9 magnitude, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
And the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Feb. 27 near Concepcion, Chile, could be one of the most expensive ever for insurance companies, according to Insurancenewsnet.com.
Eqecat, a company that specializes in catastrophe risk modeling software, estimated that insured losses could be as high as $8 billion.
The most expensive earthquake in U.S. history was the Northridge quake in 1994 that had $22 billion in claims, according to Business News Americas.
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