As I write this post, I’m hanging up from a conference call with my staff in Edmonton, Alberta. They were distracted during the call as they watched funnel clouds forming just outside their office windows, and they had just finished telling us that they had told their crews to get off the roads and back in to the office if possible due to a tornado warning. There was such shock in their voice that one of the other participants asked them if they wanted to discontinue the call and pick it up again. It reminded me of July 24, 2004, when I was driving near where I lived in a small town just outside Edmonton. The sky turned green – just like I had heard about the F4 tornado that hit Edmonton on July 31, 1987. A huge twister formed in the sky right above my head; fortunately, it was too large and moving too fast to form.It also got me thinking about a recent report I’d read from Munich Reinsurance stating that catastrophe losses in 2012 were relatively moderate. This has been news to me, as I’ve spent most of this summer dealing with the after effects of summer storms – two in particular in Thunder Bay and, most recently, in Edmonton, Alberta. Both of them were interesting in their own rights, and both cities have had a history of similar losses.
Thunder Bay – May 27-28, 2012
The City of Thunder Bay, Ontario is a glorious piece of land located on the western Shore of Lake Superior, just north of Duluth, Minnesota. The western edge of the Canadian Shield, it’s filled with mixed forest, huge rugged outcrops, and is surrounded by provincial and national parks. The local university, Lakehead, boasts one of the best Parks Management programs in North America, and while the area has all the modern blights like big-box stores and upscale chain restaurants, it’s still a glorious, picturesque part of the world.
On May 27th to 28th, 2012, the City of Thunder Bay received over 100mm of rainfall in just a few short hours, setting a new single-day rainfall record; this rainfall fell into a storm sewer system that was already charged with 100mm of rainfall received previously in the month. The result was a catastrophic failure of the city’s sewage treatment plant. This sewage treatment plant is described as state-of-the-art, and had only been open for a few years. the necessity to build this plant was made obvious by several catastrophic sewer back-up events – at least three in the previous eight years. The plant was to prevent these sorts of losses from occurring again, and had been designed to withstand a “once-in-a-hundred-year” storm event.
Thunder Bay’s public works department stated in a public meeting that the new system normally processes 50,000,000 litres to 60,000,000 litres (50-60 ML) per day, and that this is roughly 1/2 of the normal capacity of the system. Within 90 minutes of the storm happening, the system was running at a flow-through rate of 150 ML per day – over the normal capacity, but still within tolerances for a short burst. Public Works officials were trying to get to the plant to monitor things, but it took a considerable period of time as roads were washed out and they were re-routed three times. Within three hours of the storm, the flow-through rate was 750 ML per day – roughly 15 times the daily average – and the plant itself experienced a catastrophic backup to their systems. This kept the plant off-line until June 4, 2012, running on temporary pumping until then.
The failure of the plant caused an immediate and catastrophic stress on the system, with raw sewage backing up into the homes of Thunder Bay residents, especially in the East side of the city – one of the less affluent communities in the area. This despite the fact that the city did pump directly into Lake Superior to try to mitigate the damage caused. Thousands of homes were damaged as a result, including some damaged by seepage and other forms of uninsured losses, but the majority of the claims made were for sewer backup losses. Residents of the town, especially the worst-hit east side, were notably angry with the city officials, who seemed to them to be more concerned about the damage to their new sewage treatment plant than they did about the damage to the residents’ houses. Upon attending one of the town-hall style meetings that the city officials held, a colleague and I left after only a few questions, as it was clear that it was going to be fairly pointed, and frankly quite sad, given what a lot of the residents had gone through.
Approximately 2000 homes were damaged in the event, and the rebuilding – while underway – will take months to complete. FirstOnSite Restoration mobilized support to assist just over 300 property owners, and are also working with mobilized staff to affect the rebuilding of the damaged properties.
Edmonton Alberta – July 12 and July 14 (and July 17, 18, 19 and 21st)
The City of Edmonton holds a special place in my heart, as I lived there for nearly a decade and still visit the city several times a year. On Thursday July 12, 2012, Edmonton received a massive hail and rainstorm – Environment Canada confirms 70mm, and there are reports of up to 100mm, all within 21 minutes– and you can see some startling photographs from that storm at the link above courtesy of the CBC, and also courtesy of the Edmonton Sun. This storm caused many of the storm sewers to clog with hail, and the volume of water trying to drain through the system totally overwhelmed it. Hundreds of homes and businesses were flooded, or had a sewer back-up, in that 21 minutes and the hours after as the water continued to drain out through the system. Ultimately, the damages from this storm proved to be the worst, and the most likely caused by something other than seepage.This storm was only the first of several however. Two days later, on July 14th, a second large downpour hammered the city directly, but also more suburb and outlying areas surrounding the provincial capital, and re-flooded many properties that had already been flooded on the 12th. Then more storms followed, continuing through nearly every-other day, damaging already damaged properties again and affecting even further outlying bedroom communities. Minor storms have continued including the tornado warning from July 23 that I mentioned at the start of this article, and another one on July 28. Thousands of properties have now been affected, the local and provincial government did not declare a state of emergency and therefore there is no funding available for losses not covered by insurance. Already, an Edmonton law firm has dashed off a class-action lawsuit against the City of Edmonton for the fact that their recent work to renew the infrastructure of the city’s storm sewer system had little to no effect; this is likely due to the fact that no disaster relief will be made available.
FirstOnSite Restoration mobilized support around our office in Edmonton – an office that we put in place after our successes handling the Slave Lake forest fire (I couldn’t blog it as the article was published in Claims Canada). Given that we have only been open in Edmonton for about seven months, the response we have had has been wonderful. We were also fortunate enough to get some media exposure with CBC Radio and CBC Television, which certainly helped to get the word out about who we are. We’ve now taken in more than 200 emergency files, and are working hard on getting everyone dried out and on to the repair phase. To all of our staff and sub-trades: great work!
I started this posting about a week ago, and it looks like the storms continue – a large hail storm rolled through Edmonton and the surrounding area on July 30, 2012. I don’t yet know the status of the damages, but it certainly seemed to be a significant event.
Synchronicity (finally…)
All in all, it’s a remarkable year for storms – or is it? on May 29th, 2012, a massive pair of thunderstorms hit the city of Montreal, overwhelming the storm sewers and forcing the evacuation of several buildings. I’ve written this article over a period of time, including over July 31, 2012, the 25th anniversary of the Edmonton Tornado. On that day, I was sent the picture on the right, taken in Mountainview County, AB. There have been tornado warnings regularly over the past week. Tornados, it seems, come to Alberta at the end of July. But it doesn’t end there.
On July 2-11, 2004, a series of storms rocked Edmonton with over 151mm of rain, the most damaging happening on July 11. This is similar to the storms that rolled through Edmonton from July 12 on this year, and seem to continue on. So while everyone is suggesting a trend on climate change, there seems to have been a trend on severe summer storms in Edmonton for at least 25 years. I believe that while these storm pockets have always occurred, our ability to track and compare the data is getting much more sophisticated, insurers are getting much better at analysing catastrophic loss data, and as an industry all parties are getting better at managing catastrophe events, big and small.
The storms this summer haven’t just been in Edmonton and Thunder Bay – these are just two areas that I was deployed to for any length of time. There was a massive storm in Montreal at the end of May, a large rainstorm in Hamilton Ontario in July, and a large hail storm in Calgary in August. These storms are not uncommon, nor are they new – they have happened for years, and we have the data to show it. Climate change may be attributable to
My employer FirstOnSite Restoration is building a specialty group and specialty best practices surrounding handling catastrophic events, no matter the type, that can be rolled out across any of our offices; as the largest restoration company in Canada, we have unprecedented scope and scale to mobilize for such events.
There is one other bit of synchronicity I wanted to mention. In the early months of 1987, prior to the aforementioned tornado, three entrepreneurial independent adjusters went out and formed a new firm on their own. They did well enough for themselves, I’m told, until the tornado struck. That single event catapulted the firm forward, until it is where it is today – the single largest independent adjusting firm in Canada. Originally called Shumka, Craig and Moore, the adjusting arm is now called Claimspro, and is a part of SCM Insurance Services. Along the way they have purchased firms big and small, diversified into risk assessment, forensic accounting, investigation, rehabilitation, and software services. Congratulations to the vision – and good fortune – of those founders.
