Alberta getting hit hardest by severe weather: IBC

Increasingly severe weather is jeopardizing lives, property and livelihoods across Canada, with Alberta getting hit the hardest, according to Don Forgeron, president and CEO of Insurance Bureau of Canada.

Forgeron was speaking to an audience of Cagary business and government leaders on Wednesday. 

From 2009 to 2012, insured losses in Canada from natural catastrophes were pegged at, or near, a billion dollars a year, IBC says.

During that time, Alberta suffered the most, with an average of $673 million a year in insured losses from natural catastrophes. That is a large jump from an average of $100 million a year in catastrophic losses between 1983 and 2008.

Some of the larger events include:

• Hail storms in 2012 that wreaked havoc across the province causing $530 million dollars in damage.

• Officials had to shut down the downtown core of Calgary during high winds in November 2011.

• Fire ravaged the community of Slave Lake with losses pegged at over $700 million in 2011.

• A hailstorm pounded Calgary in 2010 with hailstones almost two inches large. The storm registered damage claims totaling $500 million dollars.

“Insured losses in Alberta have eclipsed those in other provinces, reaching hundreds of millions of dollars each year,” Forgeron said.  “And we can’t forget that behind these statistics, are stories of injured residents, severely damaged and flooded houses, trees uprooted, cars smashed, businesses interrupted, roads washed out and communities reeling.”

The industry, needing to understand the growing problem and what it means for the various regions in Canada, commissioned a comprehensive study. Authored by Dr. Gordon McBean, an internationally recognized climatologist and Nobel Prize-winner, the study found that the situation is worsening.

He looked at trends in weather patterns and projected ahead to 2050, Forgeron said. It was found that with temperatures rising, there will be more intense rain within much shorter time periods. In Alberta, flooding has been the second most frequent cause of disasters. For example, in 2005, flooding in southern Alberta resulted in $300 million in insured payouts.

At the other end of the spectrum, in the past 100 years, drought in Alberta has been the most common cause of disasters with 35 droughts between 1900 and 2005. 

IBC, and the insurance industry, believes a critical focus for adaptive measures must be municipal infrastructure. While the weather is getting worse, the aging storm-water and sewer infrastructure failure is to blame for most of the damage, Forgeron said.

As a means to help with this, IBC is developing a municipal risk assessment tool (MRAT) which will allow municipalities to identify their greatest sewer and storm water vulnerabilities.