Insured losses from flooding in Manitoba and Saskatchewan over the Canada Day weekend this year are now estimated at more than $140 million.
The estimate for the flooding that occurred June 28 to 30 includes loss adjustment expenses and came from a recent 45-day Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ) re-survey of the majority of insurers affected by the event.
“Over the Canada Day Long Weekend, a large low pressure system moved through the Prairies,” said Carolyn Rennie, CatIQ’s in-house meteorologist and director of catastrophic loss analysis. “The stationary system brought strong winds and heavy rains to areas of southeastern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba for the entire weekend. The heavy rains, up to 230 mm in some areas, caused widespread flooding. Rivers and creeks overflowed which impacted areas from Regina to Winnipeg.”
CatIQ has now pegged the flooding as the second largest catastrophe event to occur in Canada so far in 2014, behind the hailstorms in Alberta in early August.
The high catastrophe numbers suffered by the Prairie provinces are running contrary to the catastrophe model development centre of excellence’s mid-year Global Catastrophe Recap report, with data showing economic losses from global natural disasters during the six-month period ending June 30 totaled $54 billion, compared to last year’s whopping $95 billion – around 49 per cent lower than the 10-year (2004-2013) average of $106 billion.
“Despite some well documented natural disaster events during the first half of 2014, our data show that losses from both an economic and insured perspective were each below their recent averages,” says Steve Bowen, associate director and meteorologist with
Aon Benfield’s Impact Forecasting team.
Insured losses for the period reached $22 billion ($27 billion in 2013) – approximately 19 per cent below the 10-year average of $27 billion.
All numbers from the report are in US dollars.
