Insurers are providing living expenses for the displaced
It’s too early for sector to assess most of the damage caused by wildfires so far
For the moment, the big task for insurance companies in British Columbia’s wildfire crisis is connecting thousands of clients with assistance for living expenses while they wait out the threat to their communities.
While fire damage remains an evolving unknown, industry representative Aaron Sutherland said most home insurance policies will cover living expenses (less deductibles) while policyholders are forced out of their homes under evacuation orders. The Insurance Bureau of Canada, a trade group for insurance brokers, has established information centres in Kamloops and Prince George to offer information and help people connect with their insurers.
“We’re on the ground (in the communities), to provide clients with resources, so rather than having to find shelter in an evacuation centre, they can go to a hotel room, get a hot meal and whatnot,” said Sutherland, vicepresident for the bureau’s Pacific region.
More than 16,000 British Columbians have left their homes in the fire-danger zones, said Robert Turner, assistant deputy minister for Emergency Management B.C.
Close to 5,000 of those evacuees are being lodged in hotels paid for by provincial emergency social services.
Turner said around 1,800 families will receive $600 cheques from provincial emergency funds set aside to aid in the disaster, which is being administered by the Canadian Red Cross.
Brooke Moss, director of member services for BCAA, said the No. 1 thing the insurer is doing right now is getting policyholders assistance to pay for expenses they wouldn’t necessarily think of.
Moss said the company is starting to receive claims for fire damage, but insurers won’t know the true scale of the damage until they can get on the ground in communities to assess what has happened.
Adjusters have made it to the Ashcroft First Nation reserve south of Cache Creek, band Chief Greg Blain said. He believes it will take a couple more days for them to finish tallying the value of the 12 band houses destroyed in the Ashcroft wildfire.
“It was probably a little overwhelming for them,” Blain said.
Provincial authorities are beginning to assess the amount of damage done, said Jordan Turner, a spokesman for Emergency Management B.C., but the numbers are too preliminary to reveal.
The massive 2016 wildfire that charred wide swaths of Fort McMurray cost $3.7 billion in insured damage, which pushed insurance losses across the country to an annual record $4.9 billion.