Losses from the Northridge earthquake: disruption to high-technology industries in the Los Angeles Basin

This study explores the relationship between industrial location geography, metropolitan patterns and earthquake disasters. Production losses from the 1994 Northridge earthquake to the Los Angeles Basin's most important high-technology industrial sector are evaluated in the context of that area's polycentric metropolitan form. Locations for each one of the Los Angeles Basin's 1,126 advanced electronics manufacturing establishments were identified and mapped, providing an indication of the patterns and clusters of the industry. An extensive survey of those establishments gathered information on disruptions from the Northridge earthquake. Production losses were then estimated, based on the sampled plants' lost workdays and the earthquake's distance-decay effects. A conservative estimate of total production losses to establishments in seven four-digit SIC advanced electronics industrial groups placed their value at US$220.4 million. Based on this estimate of losses, it is concluded that the Northridge earthquake's economic losses were much higher than initially anticipated.