Local restoration, insurance companies flooded with calls from July storm

When Adam Cruickshank and his wife returned home from a night out following the July 16 torrential storm, a little over half of their basement was flooded.

Still, the Halton Hills resident considers himself one of the lucky ones.

“The water did not reach into the more critical area, which would be the living area,” Cruickshank recalled. He believes his sump pump may have saved that part of the home. 

Cruickshank called Milton-based PuroClean Restoration Halton/Guelph to get his basement back in order, and the work was completed in three days.

The company was overwhelmed with a torrent of calls from people in a similar boat.

Social media accounts throughout north Halton were inundated with images of flooded streets, which came about a week after the remnants of Hurricane Beryl hit many southern Ontario municipalities. 

“We brought in 16 people to do tear-outs ourselves. That’s not to mention a PuroClean from Smiths Falls has come in, a PuroClean from Barrie has come in, a PuroClean from Belleville has come in. And they’ve brought teams with them as well,” said local PuroClean head Ken McDermot.

Just in the week following the July 16 storm, the firm received 172 calls, sending out work crews to 119 properties. Flood-related calls are still coming in.

“Even though we could start two days from [getting a call], they’re (the customer) waiting a week for the insurance company to approve that they’re covered,” McDermot said in explaining factors that can delay job completion. “I don’t want to knock insurance companies, because they are overwhelmed too.”

The work generated by the storm also kept Ray Johnson and his Georgetown office of The Co-operators busy, at least for a few days.

“From my office’s standpoint, the first three days were busy taking reports down and talking to clients,” recalled Johnson. “That’s kind of settled, but from a head office standpoint, they’re going to be busy for a while.”

The extent of damage to property in Milton and Halton Hills is still be assessed, with Johnson’s corporate head office classifying the storm as a “major claims event.” 

“We are still working through the details, but Cat IQ has already responded that the overall cost to the industry could be over $1 billion,” reads a statement from The Co-operators head office. Cat IQ is a Toronto-based provider of analytics to the insurance industry. 

“Over the years, incidents of extreme weather and flooding in our country have become more sudden, more frequent and more severe. And so has the cost to Canadians. This is a trend we expect to continue,” the statement further noted.

This sentiment has been reflected in the work of the University of Waterloo’s Dr. Jason Thistlethwaite, who’s been examining the effects of climate change on the insurance industry. In his report titled Canada’s Coming Insurance Crisis, he states that climate change and more frequent extreme weather events like the July 16 storm will make affordable insurance harder to access.

He added that the economic benefits of insurance “are not sustainable without a concerted effort by Canadian municipal, provincial and federal policy makers to improve hazard and climate risk management.”

The insurance industry relies on historical data as a predictor of future weather events that may cause damage. This approach, according to Dr. Thistlethwaite, is akin to “driving down the road by looking at the rearview mirror.” 

He calls for new investments and methods to ensure safety.