USGS’s Increase of Texas’s Earthquake Risk Level: Commercial Real Estate and Insurance Implications

Today, Pillsbury attorneys James Lloyd, Vince Morgan, Adam Weaver and Tamara Bruno published their client alert titled USGS’s Increase of Texas’s Earthquake Risk Level: Commercial Real Estate and Insurance Implications. The Alert discusses the increase in seismic activity in the Fort Worth Basin and the likelihood that this increase will lead to a corresponding rise in the official earthquake risk level for the Fort Worth Basin when the United States Geological Survey (USGS) releases an updated earthquake hazard map in the coming months. This map and the USGS’s estimates of seismic risk play a crucial role in determining insurance costs, building codes and lenders’ insurance requirements.