Market Data 
- Natural disasters like fires and floods put financial and emotional strain on affected residents.
- Property data firm CoreLogic identified the US areas with the lowest risk from natural disasters.
- The lowest-risk places are mostly in the western part of the US, including Washington and Oregon.
Natural disasters are increasing — and it’s causing some people to reconsider where they live.
Some of the most idyllic places to live in the US have become disaster-prone. Take coastal Florida, most recently battered by Hurricane Milton, and LA’s foothills, which battled wildfires that have devastated many neighborhoods.
Extreme weather events — increasing in intensity and frequency — have claimed lives, homes, and businesses. They’ve cost taxpayers and insurance companies billions of dollars, and prompted insurers to reduce coverage in high-risk areas.
Alexander de Sherbinin, a Columbia University geographer who specializes in the human impacts of climate change, expects to see a lot of climate migration in the coming years as Americans search for stability.
“Not everybody is necessarily going to go far. But we could see significant movements, probably away from the coasts and toward the north,” de Sherbinin told Columbia Magazine.
So, where is safe?
While all US regions will face climate challenges, some areas are more resilient than others.
Property data firm CoreLogic put together a list of the safest ZIP codes in the US based on the firm’s Risk Score, which uses property data, replacement costs, and natural hazard insights to determine how weather and climate disasters affect single-family homes financially.
“We combine all of that into the calculation — so it’s not just the peril, it’s not just the resiliency of the structure,” Corelogic principal data scientist Tanya Havlicek told Business Insider. “It’s those two things together creating the financial loss.”
BI analyzed CoreLogic’s data by ZIP code, grouping the safest ones by metropolitan area and highlighting the 10 most populous ones below. The home price data, from Redfin, gives a sense of how much it would cost to buy a home there.
One ZIP code in greater Los Angeles, home to the University of California Irvine campus, appears on the list. It’s a pocket of LA that is relatively protected from fires, floods, and earthquakes, said Anand Srinivasan, vice president of research and development at CoreLogic.
Here are 10 metropolitan areas with the lowest risk of climate damage, according to CoreLogic.
