Intact Financial Corp. announced it has partnered with Montana-based Wildfire Defense Systems to launch a new wildfire loss prevention and suppression service available to the majority of residential homes in Alberta and British Columbia.MIKE CASSESE/Reuters
Canada’s largest property and casualty insurer is rolling out a new fire prevention pilot project this summer that will deploy trained fire experts to homes in Western Canada that are in the line of active wildfires.
Intact Financial Corp. IFC-T is announcing Tuesday it has partnered with Montana-based Wildfire Defense Systems to launch a new wildfire loss prevention and suppression service available to the majority of residential homes in Alberta and British Columbia. The WDS service will send trained professionals, including retired firefighters, to policy holders’ homes that are threatened by a wildfire that is less than five kilometres away.
“Last year, the wildfire season in Alberta and British Columbia was very intense, and the very warm and dry winter we had this year is conducive to what could be another challenging wildfire season,” Intact senior vice-president of personal lines Guillaume Lamy said in an interview.
“We think weather losses could increase by 50 per cent by 2040 and wildfires in Western Canada specifically are going to be more frequent and more violent.”
The pilot project, which will continue until the end of this year, will automatically be added to home insurance policies to all B.C. and Alberta residents for no additional cost.
In B.C., it is available to those who live south of the 56th parallel line – a line of latitude that runs across the northern part of the province and is used as a reference by Intact. In Alberta, it is available to all residents who live south of the 57th parallel line, which begins at Fort McMurray. This includes policy holders of Intact’s subsidiary brands belairdirect and Intact Prestige. (The pilot is excluded for residents of the islands located off the coast of B.C).
Services may include removing materials from around the property that may fuel a fire (such as propane tanks, furniture or grass clippings); covering exterior vents, doors and windows to prevent embers from entering the home; setting up temporary sprinkler systems to increase humidity and lower temperatures; or in some cases spraying fire retardant on properties.
The WDS team will monitor the fires and arrive in neighbourhoods as needed. Once the threat of wildfire is gone, the WDS team will attempt to return to the homes to place items back that were moved, remove sprinklers and confirm there is no continuing threat.
Fire insurance is a standard feature of every home and business insurance policy, and typically includes coverage for living expenses including food, clothing and hotel stays when people cannot return home after a fire. Commercial policies tend to be more complex and are not included in Intact’s pilot project.
Climate change has been driving up the cost of home insurance premiums, with disaster claims in Canada more than quadrupling over the past 15 years, accounting for $3.1-billion of insured losses in 2023. That is up from just $400-million in 2008, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
Mr. Lamy at Intact said the insurer paid out more than $1-billion in natural disaster claims in 2023, with a significant portion related to wildfires.
More than 100,000 square kilometres burned in Canada owing to wildfires in 2023, breaking the country’s record set in 1989, when 76,000 square kilometres were burned.
Fires that ripped through B.C.’s Okanagan Valley, devastating parts of West Kelowna, cost more than $720-million, making it that province’s costliest insured event. And while Alberta’s 2016 blaze in Fort McMurray remains the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history, with $9.9-billion in damages (of which $3.6-billion was insured), the increase in frequency of events is driving higher overall losses.
“When we saw what happened last year, we really took a pause and analyzed the impact that global warming and that 3 to 5 degrees global warming scenario could have on our business,” Mr. Lamy said. “So this partnership with Wildfire Defense Systems is really an example of how Intact is doubling down on building resilient communities and helping communities and our customers adapt to the impact of wildfires.”
WDS has been operating its wildfire prevention program for 16 years and has responded to more than 1,300 wildfires across 22 states. Mr. Lamy said WDS has centres located throughout the western United States, including centres close to the Canadian border where they can “quickly deploy as needed.”
Clare O’Hara