Anxiety around winter weather is climbing fast in Canada, new national survey findings from First Onsite Property Restoration suggested. Seven in 10 Canadians now worry about winter storms, burst pipes, extreme cold, and power outages – a 10% increase from last year.
Jim Mandeville (pictured), senior vice president, large loss – North America at First Onsite Property Restoration, told Insurance Business that media coverage of environment-related news has contributed to the concern, but noted that recent conditions have also made some of those fears understandable.
“Media has played a role for sure, but I also think that people in this country have experienced some weird weather in the last year or two,” he told Insurance Business.
He added that he is unsure how the next year will unfold in terms of natural catastrophes.
“We're going to have to wait and see. But it's been far too nice for far too long in BC, and it didn't rain at all in Atlantic Canada all summer for the first time in living memory. It's been weird, so I think people are just anticipating a big change,” he said.
Mandeville said there are persistent misconceptions about winter-related risks and insurance, and that ice in pipes is by far the biggest one.
“What everybody thinks about with winter risk in their home, or even their apartment or their condo, is: a pipe is going to freeze.”
That is a concern, Mandeville admitted, but it's really only a concern if you live in an old home – something that's 50, 60, or 70 years old.
Generally speaking, he added, fear is largely overblown because building codes in Canada have been robust enough to prevent frozen pipes since at least the 1970s.
The only time restoration companies see frozen pipes in modern buildings is when something's gone wrong, like a heat or power outage, he explained.
“People tend to worry about that a lot more than probably they should,” he said.
At the same time, many homeowners underestimate other, more likely sources of damage.
According to Mandeville, what they don't worry about is things like water coming in the house because they've piled all their snow up against the foundation to get it off a sidewalk or a backyard.
“They don't think about the leaves and the trash that are plugging up the catch basin on the street in front of their house,” he pointed out.
That could potentially result in a sewer backup for them or their neighbors, he warned. Home exteriors are another blind spot.
“If I ask 50 people what color their roof is, not very many are going to get it right,” Mandeville joked, and advised people to check their roofing.
“Does something look wrong? Look at the siding or the walls of your house. Is something flapping? Is something loose? Those are the things people don't look at enough, and those are often the things that actually result in real damage to your home, especially long-term damage,” he said.
According to Mandeville, flooding is by far the winter event causing the most damage to homes and businesses.
Most of that damage, he explained, comes down to drain backups and sump pump failures.
“What happens is we have a big snowfall and then it gets warm and then all that melts at once, or we have a big snowfall and then it rains. That causes by far the most amount of damage in the wintertime,” he said.
There are also regions of the country that are more prone to structural collapse events, where heavy snow accumulation followed by warmer temperatures causes roofs to fail.
“While those individual losses can be enormous, they're not necessarily as widespread, because our building codes for the most part have taken care of that over the last 50 years,” he said.
It often happens in central and northern Ontario, rural Quebec, and New Brunswick. “It's the traditional snow belt areas, if you think about it that way.”
Such incidents can translate into major claims, but they typically affect individual structures.
Despite the growing anxiety, Mandeville said there are straightforward steps people can take to reduce their winter-related risk.
Aside from the obvious – paying attention to your home – you need to make sure that your sump pump is functioning properly, and that if you live in an area where that sump pump runs a lot, you have a battery backup option available for that, Mandeville said.
“Same thing with your wastewater system: making sure you have a backflow preventer installed on your main wastewater line, especially if you live in Toronto or Montreal. Those are the biggest things.”
He also cautioned that people tend to forget about basic precautions when they go away during the winter.
“A lot of people tend to forget that, if you are going away, you need to make sure that your heat is operational, making sure that you haven't turned it down too low. Sixteen is good. Don't turn it down to five. It's not designed to keep up at five.”
Most homeowners’ insurance policies, he added, require regular inspection of a property when it is left unoccupied.
That inspection period is usually somewhere between 48 and 96 hours, which means if you're going to be gone for a couple of weeks, you need to have a competent person go and check the inside of your home every two to four days, depending on your insurer, he warned.
“Otherwise, you could have coverage complications. It's really important that, for those people who are snowbirds, or even those taking extended vacations, someone is checking on that home while they're not there.”
