Manitoba storm may break province’s record for insured NatCat losses

Damage losses from Manitoba’s latest severe weather storm have produced 11,000 hail-related auto claims thus far and seem likely to exceed the $140-million insured loss hail event in August 2023.

“Given the fairly large footprint and multi-peril nature of the severe weather that hit Manitoba over the last day or two, we have a decent sized insured loss event on our hands,” Glenn McGillivray, managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR), told Canadian Underwriter Thursday. “At this point, two tornadoes have been confirmed while other reports are being investigated.”

As of June 10, Manitoba Public Insurance reported receiving 8,000 insurance claims related to hail, water and wind damage arising from the storm.

“This event is currently being viewed by MPI as likely its largest-ever loss event, costlier than the August 2023 hailstorm when 16,000 claims cost it $140 million, mostly in Winnipeg,” McGillivray said, citing MPI’s statement. “Damage from the latest severe weather in the province is much more widespread than that was.”

Grant Wainikka, CEO of the Insurance Brokers Association of Manitoba, told CU brokers in the province are “extremely busy right now,” helping their clients navigate sewage backup and overland flooding claims. He also said the province’s commercial lines brokers expect to see business interruption claims coming in over time.

Southern Manitoba saw “a wild night of storms with monsoon-like downpours…and vehicles abandoned on flooded roads,” The Weather Network reported Thursday. “Nowhere was hit with more rain than Stonewall, just north of Winnipeg, where more than 250 millimetres had been reported by 3 a.m. Wednesday, according to Environment Canada.”

Wainikka told CU what set this storm apart from others is its peculiar ferocity. He happened to be on a plane about to land during the height of the storm. And for all the travel he has done as part of the job, he said it was the only time he felt “spooked” on a flight.

“The speed at which the rain came down was quite something, and difficult to manage,” he told CU, citing the Environment Canada report of 250 mm of rain in just three hours in Stonewall. That kind of rainfall is “taxing” on any infrastructure, he said, adding the P&C industry needs to discuss with all level of government how to prepare for and adapt to storms like these.

Pete Tessier, president of the Canadian Association of Managing General Agents, and president and co-founder of Taycon Risk, is based in Manitoba. He shared social media images from storm catchers showing basements with water several inches high, and roads totally washed out.

“Swan River is bad, and a ton of claims on basements in some rural areas,” he told CU in a text, adding the damage was “bad out west.”

The Weather Network said Thursday numerous reports of funnel clouds and possible tornadoes were received through much of the Red River Valley, and the Parklands area of western Manitoba. One tornado, reportedly an EF-3 strength (219-266 km/h), touched down over a farmstead in Oxbow, Sask., where the storm tracked after passing through Manitoba.

In Saskatchewan, Regina also saw flooding damage, The Weather Network reports.

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The widespread flooding will likely add substantially to the hail claims totals, McGillivray observes. And to a degree, so will the power outages.

“Usually when you get a heavy rainfall event that impacts both rural and a large urban area like Winnipeg, you get hybrid flooding,” he says. “True to this, while many property owners have been hit with overland flooding (and may or may not have adequate insurance for it), there are widespread media reports of basement flooding and sewer backup in major centres like Winnipeg.

“Also, with widespread power outages, we’ll likely see many basement flooding events due to sump system failure.”

David Gambrill

David has twice served as Canadian Underwriter’s senior editor, both from 2005 to 2012, and again from 2017 to the present.