Fort Mac fires drive record year for claims

CALGARY • The wildfires that tore through Fort McMurray last May helped raise Canada’s insurance claims to a total $4.9 billion in 2016— the highest year on record, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

The total damages in 2016 were substantially higher than the previous record of $3.2 billion set in 2013, the bureau said in report released Friday.

A dry winter and spring helped spread an unusually high number of Alberta wildfires last year, one of which torched some neighbourhoods of Fort McMurray and forced the evacuation of around 80,000 people.

The Insurance Bureau said insurable damages from the wildfire totalled $3.7 billion, more than double the damages from the Alberta floods in 2013, which was the second-most costly natural disaster in Canada’s history.

The Slave Lake, Alta. wildfires in 2011, another of the most costly insured natural disasters on record, caused $700 million in damages.

Fort McMurray community officials are still grappling with a rebuild of the parts of Fort McMurray that were most severely damaged during the blaze.

The wildfires also spread north of the town and surrounded a handful of major oilsands leases, some of which were forced to shut in production.

At its peak, roughly one million barrels per day of oilsands production was shut down, amounting to nearly half of total bitumen production in the province.

The wildfires also sparked debate over what governments and private organizations could do to lessen the risks of wildfire spread during dry seasons.

“The reach of these storms and the effect they have on our communities is staggering,” Don Forgeron, the president and CEO of IBC said in a statement. “Canadians must be prepared both physically and economically for when these disasters inevitably strike.”

Federal government spending on damages caused by disasters has grown sharply over the past few decades.

Annual spending rose from an average $40 million in the 1970s to $100 million in the ’90s. The trend continued early in the millennium, and in 2013 disaster spending in Ottawa had reached $1.4 billion, largely due to severe flooding in Ontario and Alberta.

In 2016, most insured damages from natural disasters occurred in July, as storms pummelled the Prairie provinces and Ontario.

SPENDING ON DISASTER DAMAGES HAS GROWN SHARPLY.