Compensation blowing in wind
The names for the 2023 hurricane season have been chosen, with some projections showing as many as eight of the named storms may reach hurricane-force winds this year.
This news comes as Atlantic Canadians are once again confronting the damage to their properties left from 2022.
More than six months after Fiona's post-tropical storm winds battered the region, there is still evidence of their catastrophic power. Coasts have been carved out, swaths of forest have been felled, and buildings – the ones that aren't gone completely – are still wrapped in scaffolding and tarp.
Non-governmental organization Christian Aid ranked Fiona as the eighth most expensive climactic event in the world in 2022 and reported that insurance companies were calling it the costliest extreme weather event ever in Atlantic Canada.
Insurance companies are only bearing a fraction of those costs.
Colin Allen told SaltWire in February that he had just finished $80,000 in renovations to his Port aux Basques, N.L. apartment building when Fiona destroyed the structure beyond repair. He's still making mortgage payments on the non-existent building and will have to spend a further $2 million to rebuild. None of this is covered by his insurance policy.
“They were quick enough to take my money in the first place,” he said. “They knew the building was close to the ocean. Now they're not covering my losses because it was a sea surge.”
So, Allen was paying out of pocket while he waited to see if he qualified for government assistance.
“There doesn't seem to be any rush to help people out here,” he said, noting that two months after applying he didn't even know whether he was on the list for provincial Fiona aid.
The rollout of financial relief reportedly is no faster in Nova Scotia, where only 200 of 1,400 claims had been paid out as of April 5. In P.E.I., more than 55,000 households registered for funding from the province administered by the Red Cross.
Some of the federal and provincial government financial assistance programs required a rejection letter from an insurance provider, which only slowed down the process. Even when insurance would pay, though, the money hasn't always appeared quickly.
In Halifax, Jennifer Bathurst was heating a home she couldn't live in through the winter months while paying for a rental for herself and her daughter. Meanwhile, the layers of bureaucracy between her bank and her insurance company crawled with, as she told SaltWire, “no urgency at all.”
Now that another planting, fishing and tourism season is upon us, Atlantic Canadians should already know whether they're going to be compensated for their losses from six months ago.
Hurricane seasons are only expected to intensify, so it behooves governments, banks and insurance companies to figure out how to roll out supports more quickly and efficiently.
Unlike agencies handing out disaster assistance, Arlene, Bret, Cindy and the rest of the names on the World Meteorological Organization's list for 2023 Atlantic storms aren't going to wait.