Boise-Nampa, ID most secure place of over 500,000 population in the nation

[Jim Franklin]

Today's Idaho Statesman has an article re: Farmers Insurance funded research into the most secure metropolitan areas of the nation. I would post it in its entirety if I knew how. Here is the list that accompanies the article:

1. Boise-Nampa, ID

2. Portland, ME area

3. Las Vegas-Paradise, NV

4. Honolulu, HA

5. Sacramento. CA area

6. Scranton-Wilkes Barre, PA area

7 San Diego, CA

8. Bethesda, MD area

9. Syracuse, NY

10. Santa Ana, Anaheim, CA area

The factors considered were: crime statistics, extreme weather, risk of natural disasters, terrorist threats, and job loss numbers. Our unemployment percentage is down to less than 3 % in this area. As I go about my map sales business almost every business has a sign saying "Now Hiring." Houses and infrastructure are being built so quickly that the production of current maps is a real problem. Almost need a revision every 2 months which is not feasible. As a geographer I was well aware that this area rates as one of the lowest anywhere for the risk of natural disasters and extreme weather. We are too far away from major transportation hubs and oil refineries to make us attractive to terrorists. This area is really growing fast.

[Gord Evans]

Today's Idaho Statesman has an article re: Farmers Insurance funded research into the most secure metropolitan areas of the nation. I would post it in its entirety if I knew how. Here is the list that accompanies the article:

1. Boise-Nampa, ID

2. Portland, ME area

3. Las Vegas-Paradise, NV

4. Honolulu, HA

5. Sacramento. CA area

6. Scranton-Wilkes Barre, PA area

7 San Diego, CA

8. Bethesda, MD area

9. Syracuse, NY

10. Santa Ana, Anaheim, CA area

The factors considered were: crime statistics, extreme weather, risk of natural disasters, terrorist threats, and job loss numbers. Our unemployment percentage is down to less than 3 % in this area. As I go about my map sales business almost every business has a sign saying "Now Hiring." Houses and infrastructure are being built so quickly that the production of current maps is a real problem. Almost need a revision every 2 months which is not feasible. As a geographer I was well aware that this area rates as one of the lowest anywhere for the risk of natural disasters and extreme weather. We are too far away from major transportation hubs and oil refineries to make us attractive to terrorists. This area is really growing fast.

If some of the major factors considered in the creation of this list include "risk of natural disasters" and "crime statistics", is anyone else surprised that 30% of the top ten listed "secure" cities are in California?

:basic01

[Jim Franklin]

Evidently pockets of resistence to the stereotypical sub-culture. Maybe a NazNetter from the Golden State should respond, Kim are you there?

[Scott Daniels]

Growing up in Seattle, we used to joke that we would keep the rain myth alive in order to keep out Californians. Apparently Californians like to keep the high crime perpetual earthquake myth alive to keep out Midwesterners (that and outrageous housing prices).

[John Kennedy]

Of the three california locations cited, neither Anaheim/Santa Ana nor San Diego have any recent history of significant earthquake activity. San Diego, as the place in the US where the desert comes closest to the sea, has a semi-arid climate and a fair amount of brushy canyons that make it very susceptible to fires (they had a big one last year called the Cedar fire). Sacramento has politicians. Take your choice. Anaheim/Santa Ana (especially the latter) has some gang-related crime problems.
Out where I sit, a few miles from the San Andreas Fault (the one that when it decides to let go will provide CA with a lot more beach front property) about the only other natural peril we consider is that of fire. I suspect Scott Daniels, there in Pasadena or Sierra Madre, is also on the Pacific plate side (the one that's gonna migrate northwest when (not if) we have the Big One.
But, it could be worse - we could be in Sacramento with the politicians.

[Jim Franklin]

On the day that "the Big One" had been predicted, March 1, 1969 we had are scheduled Comprehensive Exam for our Master's Program at the University of Idaho. At the top of the page the chairman of the department had printed "Welcome to Doomsday," which was rather unsettling for us test takers. Of course as geographers we had studied the possibilities and what the results might be for such a quaking shift in the plates just as we had studied the potential for disaster for New Orleans if a Level 4 or 5 huricane would hit New Orleans.