While it's sure to be significant – one local insurance company reports claims in the hundreds of thousands of dollars already – it will be at least 45 days before there's an official dollar estimate on the damage caused by Monday's storm in Greater Sudbury.
Vanessa Barrasa, manager of media relations with Insurance Bureau of Canada, said in an email that a group called Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (Cat-IQ) compiles damage estimates for the Bureau.
“In the aftermath of an event Cat-IQ gets in touch with insurers to determine if there is likely to be enough losses to be considered either a 'notable' or 'cat(astrophic)' loss events,” Barrasa said. “(Catastrophic) events are those that would have a minimum insured loss of $25 million or more, while notable events are those likely to have insured loss amounts between approximately $10 million and $25 million.”
Cat-IQ has been calculating the estimates since 2008. In April, it reported that 100 catastrophic events have happened in the last decade, with the five most costly in the last five years.
No. 1 was the Fort McMurray wildfire in 2016, followed by the Alberta flood in 2013, flooding in Toronto in 2013, hailstorms in Alberta in 2014, and the 2011 fire in Slave Lake, Alberta.
“The Canadian industry reached C$1.4 billion in insured losses in 2017,” the company said in a news release. “It is becoming increasingly common for Canadian annual insured losses from (catastrophic events) to exceed C$1 billion as severe weather events become more frequent, and 2018 is off to a costly start. CatIQ reports that Canadian insurance industry CAT losses amounted to C$17.4 billion since 2008.”
