Insurance payouts in N.L. triple in last 20 years
Ken Howell has never experienced anything like it.
The Twillingate resident went to bed on the evening on Nov. 15 and woke up the next morning with his 10- by 20-foot two-story shed ripped from its shores. It had collapsed and been pushed against the side of his house, resting on the bridge’s overhanging roof and siding.
Winds had peaked at more than 140 km/h in Twillingate, and offshore waves reached 15 metres high.
Howell’s shed is a complete write-off and his house is in need of repair.
“It’s very, very unsettling. I haven’t had a lot of sleep,” he said in the aftermath of the storm. “Now it has to be torn down and hauled away.
“I hope no one else ever has to experience anything like this.”
But Howell wasn’t alone — 152 kilometres east, near Lumsden, Denise Goodyear was trying to salvage her cabin.
“As soon as the cabin came in sight we knew there was trouble,” she said. “Walking down the path to the cabin my heart sank and the tears started to flow. The cabin had come off of the shores and had fallen to the ground on one side.”
While there wasn’t any structural damage, the log cabin had moved three to four feet.
“The front bridge was a total mess, but it looked like everything
else was in good order. There are 12 windows and three doors and thankfully not a glass was broken. The only thing inside was the wood stove had slide off its blocks and the stove pipe had broken.”
The next day — Nov. 16 — while not in its original location, the cabin was jacked up and re-secured.
Goodyear said they are trying to keep the cabin from moving again, but “it’s hard to predict what Mother Nature is capable of.”
For Hedley Elms, general manager of BELFOR Gander, the weather didn’t present anything out of the ordinary.
“We didn’t see any big influx of claims. It was regular business for us,” said Elms, who handles insurance claims from
Clarenville to Labrador City.
“We probably had 20 claims come through,” he said, adding that much of the reported damage revolved around downed trees, missing shingles and damaged siding.
“That’s probably three or four days work for us,” he said. “When you see a big tractortrailer parked in front of our building, you know there’s a lot on the go because it’s our disaster relief truck, which is equipped to handle 500-800 claims.”
The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) said insurance claims from the recent windstorm are still coming in. As a result, Atlantic vice-president Amanda Dean said it’s still too early to tell how much damage the storm caused.
However, she said, weatherrelated claims in Newfoundland and Labrador are becoming more common, as insurance claim payouts have more than tripled in the last 20 years.
According to the IBC, from 1997-2001, insurers paid out, on average, $31 million per year in personal property claims in the province.
From 2012-16, the average annual payout has been $98-million.
“It’s a pretty big jump in weather-related claims. A lot of those claims are related to water,” Dean said.
This would include sewer backups, hurricanes, damaged roofs and debris breaking windows during high winds.