Alberta brokers advised to meet the person responsible for sewers in their community

JASPER, ALTA. — The frequency and severity of some natural disasters will increase and Alberta “has had more than its share” of weather-related catastrophes, but insurance brokers can help prevent future losses by advising homeowners how to adapt, speakers told the province’s brokers Monday.

“The fact that we will have more heavy rain, more wildfire and more tornadoes does not necessarily mean that we will have more damage if people know how to change their behaviour and if all of us can be part of telling people how to change their behaviour,” said Paul Kovacs, founder and executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR), at the Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta (IBAA) convention being held in Jasper, Alberta.

Kovacs, who is also president and chief executive officer of Property and Casualty Insurance Compensation Corporation (PACICC), made his remarks during a morning presentation at the convention, which continues until Wednesday.

“Alberta has had more than its share” of natural disasters, Kovacs noted.

The province “has become Canada’s catastrophic central given the things that have happened over the last number of years,” said Doug Horner, Alberta’s president of the treasury board and minister of finance, during a luncheon speech.

Both Horner and Kovacs were alluding to last June’s floods in southern Alberta, as well as several natural disasters in recent years. Four natural disasters — the Slave Lake wildfire in 2011, two separate wind storms in the summer of 2010 and flooding in 2005 — were among the top 10 most expensive natural disasters in Canadian history, according to separate reports from both PACICC and TD Economics.

“The science is very strongly saying that we will have more frequent and more severe rainfall tornado and wildfire events,” Kovacs said.

He started his presentation by asking for a show of hands of how many attendees know the person in their community who is responsible for the sewers. A small minority raised their hands.

“Get to know the sewer guy,” Kovacs advised Alberta’s brokers. “Talk with policyholders and other folks to start sharing what can be done to prevent the losses from water and wildfire.”

He noted that ICLR is partnering with the IBAA to provide brokers with documents such as booklets on natural disaster risk.

“Part of what we are sharing as a resource is to empower the homeowner, to empower the broker to work with the homeowner if that’s the circumstance, to determine for themselves, are they are risk from water, tornado and wildfire damage,” he said.

“We are putting out a book that we will have out later this year called Cities Adapt to Extreme Rainfall, and in this book we are collecting stories of cities that are doing some very positive steps that are consistent with the science that we are identifying.”

As an example, he added, “many cities have tried to write to the public and say, ‘Your downspout should not be connected to the sewer system, we do not like that, you should stop doing that.'”

But he suggested Quebec City went a step further and mandated fines for homeowners who failed to disconnect downspouts from sewer systems.

ICLR uses research from labs in London, Ontario, such as Western University’s Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel, the Wind Engineering, Energy and Environment Research Institute and the Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes.

“In the laboratory we have been able to eliminate all damage to homes from a Magnitude, 0, 1 and even 3 tornadoes,” Kovacs said.

Meanwhile, he added, the risk of wildfire has been “picking up” in some areas of Canada.

“The biggest risk is actually the roof,” he said. “It’s usually not that the fire burns closer and closer and gets into somebody’s house.”

Instead, he suggested, if a wildfire burning some distance away, the wind can blow embers on to a roof and depending on the material of the roof, the house can catch fire. He added wildfire risk is a concern in Jasper, where at one time the bylaw mandated wood shake roofs in one neighbourhood.

“It was good for tourism,” he said. “It’s not necessarily good for wildfire risk.”

In addition to tips to reduce wildfire risk, Kovacs emphasized the importance of backwater valves, sump pumps and sloping ground away from foundations in order to reduce the risk of water damage.

“It is unfortunately common for people to move into a new house and try to make their lawn as flat or as smooth as possible,” he said. “Sometimes the sloping that is usually required when a home is first put in place — that takes water away from the home — erodes over time as the homeowner does a variety of things,  and as the ground settles.”