In Fort McMurray, let’s build resilience, rather than a repeat disaster
By Glenn McGillivray, Managing Director Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction
With the Fort McMurray wildfire, Canada has hit the big time.
The size of the event and the amount of insured damage caused may put it up there with some of the large flood and moderate hurricane and earthquake losses in the international re-insurance industry’s top 50 costliest natural catastrophes. The event will likely be greater than the current costliest and second costliest insured losses in Canadian history combined: the 2013 Alberta flood and the 1998 Eastern Canada ice storm. Indeed, Fort McMurray appears certain to go down as the costliest wildfire loss in world insurance history.
When large disasters strike, in Canada and elsewhere, the propensity is to put everything back as close to the way it was as quickly as possible. Everyone appears to want a return to normalcy, and most of the main stakeholders appear to be complicit in the decisions that lead to this rush to rebuild “as was” – provincial and local governments, insurers and property owners among them.