Number of wildfires in Canada double since the same time last year: CatIQ

There has been double the amount of wildfires nationally and almost nine times as many hectares have burned since the same time last year, said a speaker at the 6th annual Canadian Insurance Financial Forum 2015 on Wednesday.

“The hot and dry weather in the West coupled with human interaction and lightning has sparked over 2,220 fires as of yesterday, which have burned over 133,000 hectares of forest,” Carolyn Rennie, director of catastrophic loss analysis with Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ), said on Wednesday. “From this, we know that we are going to be watching forest fires for a while this year,” she said during the Review of Industry Results and Outlook presentation at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Related: Winds uncooperative as hundreds of firefighters battle raging B.C. wildfire

Of particular concern was the Little Bobtail Lake fire, about 70 kilometres southwest of Prince George, British Columbia, which burned over 25,000 hectares of forest before it was contained. In Alberta, an estimated 5,000 people were evacuated and a local state of emergency remains in effect for the Municipal District of Lesser Slake Lake. On May 25, the province of Alberta issued a province-wide fire ban and other provinces are following suit, Rennie reported. “[Forest fires] are already becoming more frequent due to above-average temperatures and a dry climate,” she said during her presentation. “This is one peril to keep a close eye on.”

Related: Blizzard dumps more than 80 centimetres of snow on Halifax

While cat losses in 2014 were just over $1 billion – “obviously, nothing compared to 2013, the year of the cat” – it is still significant, Rennie said. In 2014, 65% of losses were personal property, 22% were auto and 13% were commercial. Breaking up the losses by province, more than half were in Alberta due to the hailstorm that hit Airdrie in August 2014. (At the time, the Insurance Bureau of Canada said that the storm caused an estimated $450 million in insured damage).

Related: Lightning sparks 11 new wildfires in Alberta

Looking at 2015 to date, there were two “notable” events that do not meet the cat threshold of $25 million in insured losses. The first occurred in February, when Atlantic Canada saw over 80 centimetres of snow in a few days and wind gusts up to 176 kilometres per hour. The second notable event occurred in mid-May when severe storms struck southern Manitoba. “This created a slew of different weather, where we got gusts up to 93 kilometres, localized flooding from over 71 millimetres of rain and 15 centimetres of snow in the same locations in Manitoba,” she said.

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