This is Part Two of a four-part series called Grand Forks: Cost of Disaster. The next article will be published on Wednesday.
Derek Fillion says he is on the brink of bankruptcy, juggling two mortgages after losing his Grand Forks, B.C., home to catastrophic flooding in May 2018.
Fillion received $62,000 in provincial Disaster Financial Assistance but the payout didn’t account for home improvements and wasn’t enough to rebuild.
After spending 5.5 months living in a fifth-wheel trailer on their flooded South Ruckle property, Derek and his wife Sandra Benjamin used the DFA money towards a down payment on a new home.
Fillion told Global News he isn’t on the buyout list so they’re off the radar and falling through the cracks of the emergency recovery system, now drowning in debt.
“Bankruptcy is always looming.”
It’s a cautionary tale for those living in high-risk flood zones as Fillion wasn’t covered by his home insurance policy.
“When we first got the insurance, I don’t think it was even discussed,” he said.
Grand Forks insurance broker John McNamara said he travelled to the Insurance Brokers Association of BC annual general meeting in May 2018 advocating for insurance solutions.
He said residential overland flood insurance is a new and optional product that is not widely available in smaller communities, with coverage limitations and homes on flood plains may not be eligible.
McNamara said the insurance industry should create a universal residential overland flood insurance policy, similar to fire coverage, as losses due to flooding continue to mount.
“Maybe water should be like fire and everybody has to have the coverage in residential insurance, so that people who have low exposure to a loss from that water damage, they would pay a proportionately smaller premium, but everyone paid into it and people who needed that coverage would find that coverage a little more affordable,” he said.
McNamara said under a standardized policy, premiums would be scaled based on risk, resulting in a larger pool of funding to pay out overland flood claims.
“We have to come up with either an insurable solution that is sustainable because insurance companies collect premiums to pay for the losses. If we’re going to expect insurance companies to pay more out in claims from flood events and forest fires and these other types of natural disasters that are becoming more common and more costly, it’s got to be done in a sustainable way,” he said.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada is scrambling to find insurable solutions to increased losses caused by natural disasters.
“Canada’s insurance industry has seen a rapid rise in the cost of insured damage in this country due to events associated with climate change,” said vice-president Aaron Sutherland.
“Things like storms, floods and wildfires. We have seen payouts for those events rise from just a few hundred million dollars annually to being at or above one billion dollars each and every year in this country so climate change is really having a dramatic effect.”
Sutherland said the insurance industry is working with senior levels of government to create a national flood program.
“How do we create a flood insurance policy that is available and accessible to all Canadian homeowners and that’s going to require public-private partnership of some kind where (we) can all come together to make sure that even those folks living at highest risk have access to flood insurance in the future,” he said.
Sutherland said governments need to take a hard look at mitigation and land use policies, including managed retreat and moving people and buildings away from known risks.
WATCH: In an extended interview Aaron Sutherland, the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s vice-president, says the industry is working with senior levels of government to develop a national flood plan in the wake of mounting losses.
“We know we’ve built and we are living in areas that are very high risk and we really need to think and have some frank and difficult conversations about where we live, about where we built our communities,” he said.
“If there are portions of our communities that are in areas that are such high risk that it simply doesn’t make sense to build in those areas following flood events, so Grand Forks is a good example,” he said.
Some insurance companies like Westland are already making overland flood insurance mandatory as part of a home insurance package, but sales representative Sarah Strom said those living in high-risk flood zones would likely receive minimal coverage in the event of a flood.
An insurable solution could be years away, leaving flood-affected homeowners like Fillion to flounder.
He’s listed the old property for sale and is trying to recoup some of what he’s lost.
“I just need to get rid of that property,” he said.
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