Why claims pros see an influx of fire claims during deep freezes

With polar vortex deep freezes in Canada this winter, you might expect to see frozen pipes and water damage. But insurance claims professionals are also seeing other related, unexpected losses on the rise — fire claims.

In personal lines, winter storms and extreme cold can lead to power losses, creating the need for heat to stay warm. That’s when homeowners who don’t have generators or other alternate power supplies start to get creative.

And that’s when the fire risk increases, Jim Mandeville, senior vice president of First Onsite, tells Canadian Underwriter. 

“Relatively speaking, we see a lot of fires caused by space heaters with cheap extension cords,” Mandeville says. “People are trying to use the stove to warm stuff up. People are using fireplaces, like wood-burning fireplaces, that haven’t been used in 25 years.

“Anytime something happens out of the norm, people do stuff they either shouldn’t or never have, maybe both, and that results in a bunch of claims…

“If more people had alternative heat or alternative power arrangements, either standby generators or proper extension cords and space heaters, you wouldn’t have those fires.”

How to prevent flooding

Flooding caused by burst pipes is more commonly associated with insurance claims related to deep freezes. Mandeville notes flooding can result when homeowners don’t have battery backups to keep their sump pumps working.

“If more people had battery backup systems for their sump pumps, then you wouldn’t have a sump pump failure that causes $100,000 worth of damage,” says Mandeville.

In some ways, a long and steady deep freeze, such as in Western Canada, can lead to a different winter risk than in Ontario, where you’re more likely to see extreme cold followed by a sudden warming and a quick thaw.

“If we talk about Southern Ontario, we don’t have consistent very cold temperatures like we do in the West,” says Mandeville. “So, when we go from hovering around freezing to minus 30, and back and forth, we end up with ice damming like crazy. If you talk about the total volume of [winter-related] claims, especially from an underwriting perspective, it’s ice damming [among the most].”

What is ice damming?

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When heat escapes from a home during the winter, it melts the snow on the roof. The melted water runs down to the colder, unheated eaves and refreezes, causing a thick ridge of ice to form along the edge of a roof, typically at the eaves.

Over time, this frozen ridge of ice can grow, eventually trapping water on the roof. “If the water has nowhere to drain, it can potentially push back up against the underside of the roof shingles and make its way into the home,” as the Insurance Bureau of Canada explains.

Mandeville says one way to correct the problem is to make sure the home’s attic is properly insulated. Insulation will keep the heat inside the home so that it doesn’t melt the snow on the roof.

Consumers have two common incentives to do this, Mandeville tells CU.

“If you can add some insulation to your attic, Number 1, there’s usually some sort of rebate program, whether it’s hydro or a municipality, somebody’s got a rebate program for that almost all the time,” he says. “And it saves you on heating costs, right?”

Mandeville adds homeowners often don’t learn their lesson from a small claim related to ice damming. They will make a claim for water damage related to ice damming in one year, for example, but then they don’t do anything after that to correct the issue, figuring it will never happen again.

And then it snows again the next year, and it happens again.

Common commercial winter claims

On the commercial side of things, winter claims often relate to damage caused by equipment failure.

“Commercially speaking, when it gets really cold, we see sprinkler failures in vestibules and around automatic doors,” says Mandeville. “So, restricting automatic door use, making people use the manual door beside it, even though it’s inconvenient, sometimes can be very helpful.”

The cold can also expose defects in newer construction, which haven’t been subjected to those types of colder temperatures before.

“That’s where you start to see construction defects surface,” he says. “For example, maybe one joist header cavity wasn’t insulated properly. Or one sprinkler head was connected to the wet system instead of dry system, like it was supposed to be. You start to see construction defects really become apparent.”

David Gambrill

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