The atmospheric river that flooded several areas across British Columbia’s south coast last month has led to more than $110 million in insured damages.
The initial estimate was calculated by Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. and reported by the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) Friday.
From Oct. 18 to 20, intense rainfall led rivers to burst their banks, resulting in backed-up sewers, and flooded basements, parking garages and roads.
Much of the damage struck densely populated communities of Metro Vancouver — in Coquitlam, Burnaby, North and West Vancouver and Surrey, according to the IBC.
Four people died in the storm, including two drivers on Vancouver Island, one teacher in a Coquitlam mudslide, and a man walking near a swollen river.
In North Vancouver, the municipality declared a state of emergency and evacuated six properties in the community of Deep Cove after extreme rainfall triggered flooding. A week later, a cascading debris the size of “pumpkins” prompted a new evacuation order.
“They were very large stones that came down, and literally thousands of them,” District of North Vancouver Mayor Mike Little told North Shore News at the time.
Over the past few weeks, insurers have been on the ground with customers as they work through the recovery process, Aaron Sutherland, IBC’s vice-president for the Pacific and western regions of Canada, said in a statement.
“Damaged property can be repaired or replaced, however our thoughts continue to be with the families and friends who lost loved ones as a result of this storm,” Sutherland said.
According to the IBC, about 10 per cent of Canadian households can’t access flood insurance because they live in areas deemed too risky for coverage.
“While insurers will be paying out millions of dollars in claims for this event, we expect total losses to be far higher due to the number of uninsured properties, as well as damage to public infrastructure,” said IBC’s national director of climate change advocacy Jason Clark.
The cost of insured losses due to extreme weather events has been trending up in recent decades, and now regularly exceeds $3 billion a year in Canada. Between 2001 and 2010, Canadian insurers paid out an average of $701 million a year in severe weather claims.
This year, claims have already reached $7.7 billion — an all-time record.
With files from Andy Prest and Abby Luciano
