Recovery finally has momentum
FORT MCMURRAY WILDFIRE REBUILD GAINING MOMENTUM AS HURDLES CLEARED
Along-delayed building boom in Fort McMurray is ramping up as homeowners, insurers, contractors, and officials in the Alberta city clear hurdles that hindered reconstruction after the devastating wildfire last May.
While many residents and businesses had hoped to break ground last year, challenges ranged from the amount of debris that had to be removed to the volume of permits and insurance claims that needed to be processed.
Efforts to rebuild some of the more than 2,500 dwellings destroyed were also delayed as the risks and costs of winter construction meant many decided to put off the work.
“It’s been a slow start, but it’s really starting to motor,” says local builder Gilles Huizinga, who’s also president of the UDI-Wood Buffalo developer association.
Construction started on a record 96 detached houses in January, while the 92 in February were not far behind the record for the month set at the end of a 2007-08 building frenzy.
March saw a drop in detached housing starts to 34. But with semi-detached and row housing included, there’s already 282 units underway this year. And the city has so far issued about 650 building permits representing some 900 housing units, a clear sign of much more construction to come.
Natural disasters generally trigger rebuilding booms, but Fort McMurray will see more activity than most as the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history. The Conference Board of Canada expects about $5.3 billion will be spent because of the fire, including $1.2 billion for rebuilding and repairing homes and another $850 million for restoring businesses.
The spending — and the 9,000 jobs the Conference Board says will be created this year — has attracted a wave of contractors and tradespeople to the city, prompting some local builders to raise questions about their reliability.
“All of the sudden you have a hundred builders showing up in Fort McMurray,” said Greg Walsh, rebuild team leader at Qualico Homes. “A lot of them don’t have a clue what they’re doing. They’ve never built anything here.”
Walsh also said he’s concerned that some newcomers are giving insurance companies low-ball quotes, which could lead to problems.
The insurance industry, however, does extensive screening of contractors to avoid such problems, said Bill Adams, vicepresident of Western and Pacific Region for the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC).
“All insurers have a fairly sophisticated qualification process they go through in vetting the contractors that they’ve put forward,” said Adams.
Huizinga noted that in the wake of the disaster, many homeowners are in a state of vulnerability and urged they seek third-party advice before signing major contracts, and as head of the local UDI he’s been giving advice when he can.
The builder said in most cases construction is going well, with the most common issues stemming from questions about whether things like fencing, sod, a detached garage or deck are covered by insurance and the agreement with the contractor.
One of the closest parallels to the Fort McMurray disaster was the devastating wildfire of 2011 in Slave Lake, where Mayor Tyler Warman said some homeowners in his town did run into serious problems in rebuilding.
“There was a minority that had some horrible stories where the house isn’t finished, contractor’s gone with the money, and no one’s calling them back,” said Warman.