Ontario says Niagara residents flooded by sewage backups don’t qualify for disaster aid, as a $360 million estimate ties the summer damage to storms that overwhelmed municipal sewers.
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Back-to-back storms that struck north Niagara helped push total insured losses from natural disasters over the summer to some of the highest on record, new reporting shows.
The flooding began with two rounds of rain overnight on July 27 and July 28, then again on Aug. 2, with each period dumping about a month’s worth of water in a few hours. The deluge overwhelmed municipal sanitary sewer systems in St. Catharines, Lincoln, and parts of Niagara-on-the-Lake and Niagara Falls, flooding thousands of homes with sewage-tainted water.
Three months later, St. Catharines riding MPP Jennie Stevens said residents whose homes were flooded with sewage-tainted water are still dealing with insurance disputes and unanswered claims.
Stevens demanded the province activate the Disaster Recovery Assistance for Ontarians (DRAO) program during question period at Queen’s Park this week, arguing the storms caused flash flooding. In response, Ontario Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Rob Flack said the program was not triggered because the damage was not overland water.
“Bottom line is, DRAO was not activated because it was not overland water,” Flack said. “It was sewer backups.”
DRAO generally pays up to $250,000 for emergency expenses, repairs and replacing essential property after natural disasters such as floods, tornadoes, landslides and earthquakes, and a provincial website says it generally doesn’t cover damage from sewer backups, except in a provision that may apply to low-income households.
Stevens said the province’s position leaves residents without help, noting “ninety two days later, still, no relief” in north Niagara.
The scale of the flooding was estimated by Toronto-based Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. at $360 million. That figure was described as a sizeable part of the roughly $3.7 billion in insured losses nation-wide over the summer that included severe storms across the prairies, wildfires in British Columbia and other natural disasters, as reported by the Insurance Bureau of Canada on Oct. 22.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada said losses from extreme weather continue to rise, with insured losses from extreme weather in Canada averaging more than $3.7 billion annually over the last decade, compared with $1.4 billion in the previous decade and $883 million in the decade before that.
The bureau said governments should reduce Canada’s exposure to extreme weather through steps such as land-use planning to restrict development in high-risk areas, incentives for homeowners to invest in practical damage-reduction measures, and investing in resilient infrastructure to protect communities from risks like flooding.
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