Planning to Cope With the Unexpected

"If you want to prevent billions of dollars of damage every year, you do have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do that. A number of quality international studies" lead to the conclusion that for every $1Canadians send on damage prevention $4 is repaid on savings on recovery efforts.
"We don't necessarily have to have more losses. We know how to do it, the science is there, we just have to have the willingness to spend the money and move forward."
Paul Kovacs, executive director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

The unexpected, in fact, should be expected. Accidents occur, sometimes on a massively destructive scale. One has only to look at the events as they unfolded in Lac-Megantic with the train explosions destroying its town centre and with it the lives of 47 residents of all ages when an inadequately parked train on a downslope slide driverless under cover of darkness to destroy the soul and spirit of a town in Quebec.

Police Handout - almost nothing remains of the area immediately surrounding the explosion site in Lac-Megantic

And when it isn't catastrophic accidents of the type that consumed so many lives in Lac-Megantic, it is the potential for natural disasters whose incidence appears to have been on the increase in lock-step with the alterations in our atmosphere resulting from what scientists now call Climate Change. Prevention measures such as dikes and floodways don't come cheap, costing hundreds of millions.

Canadian case studies demonstrate great savings can be in the offing with common sense preventive measures to be taken. The Red River floodway completed in 1968 costing $63-million, upgraded at a cost ten times that original amount, in 2004, is credited with having effectively prevented $40-billion in damage over time to the City of Winnipeg, according to the Government of Manitoba. They had the intention and the will to proceed.

Federal Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney has announced plans for the development of a national program to safeguard Canadians against the destructive effects of natural events and accidents alike that go dreadfully awry. Aging infrastructure, earthquakes, pandemics, terrorism and the effects of climate change are all realities that must be confronted, for they happen and they must be dealt with.

But, say the tired skeptics, very similar promises and plans have been around for the past two decades and have failed to move forward from the initial promises and planning stages. "I am not optimistic that it will be different this time. I would very much like it to be", said Gordon McBean, University of Western Ontario professor, and co-author of a number of climate change studies.

A National Disaster Mitigation Strategy was published in 2008 and is available for scrutiny on Public Safety Canada's website. Based on consultations with the provinces and territories circa 2005 following on meetings in 2002, it has never been developed. A Canada-wide approach has yet to be implemented. "Myself and most scientists like me find (the inaction) very frustrating", commented Dr. McBean.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward  Flood waters surround buildings in Canmore, Alta. 

Friday, June 21, 2013. 

 

A widely publicized report co-authored by Prof. McBean in 2012 for the Insurance Bureau of Canada concluded that extreme weather events cost Canadians $1.6-billion in 2011, almost $1-billion each in 2010 and 2009. But along came the floods in Alberta this past summer and that estimate of costs ballooned to almost $5-billion, and climbing.

Photo Jordan Verlage, Kevin Yeats swims after his cat MoMo