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FILE PHOTO: Satellite image shows wildfires in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, September 24, 2023.
Alberta sounds alarm on 2024 wildfire season
It’s already begun … The Alberta government on Tuesday declared an early start to the 2024 wildfire season as firefighters there prepare for a hot, dry year ahead. Across Canada, authorities are bracing for a difficult year of fires after a record-setting year in 2023, which sent smoke plumes to population centers across the continent.
A warming climate is making forests drier and more susceptible to big, dangerous fires. More than 100 “zombie fires” (dormant in winter) are still smoldering in Western Canada, where they pose a threat when the weather warms up again.
“It's not something I've seen in any of the data sets,” Wilfrid Laurier University biology professor Jennifer Baltzer told CBC. “What we don't know is how many of these will actually translate to reignition in the spring.”
The continental United States was largely spared last year, and so far the projections look good for 2024 but worrying for the long term.Wildfires spread after lightning strikes in British Columbia, Canada, on July 01, 2021.
Are parts of Canada and the US uninsurable?
One of Eurasia Group’s Top Risks is El Nino, the climate warming event that is triggering storms, floods, and fires and helping make this the warmest year on record. This will come as no surprise to most of you, who are either prepping for a weather event right now or having flashbacks to choking on smoke from the Canadian wildfires. The politics of climate change get repetitive and, frankly, can be boring— “yeah, yeah, we need to do something about global warming, but dude, have you seen the cost of housing these days …” Fair point. which is why the connection between the real cost of weather events and housing is so critical to keep in mind.
According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, Canada’s insured damage from natural disasters and severe weather events in 2023 topped CA$3 billion dollars for the second year in a row. It was the fourth-worst year in history, and the effects are driving up the costs of insurance.
And this is where it gets scary. Right now, more than 1.5 million homes can’t get affordable flood insurance, IBC says. If risk costs for fires and floods go up much more, some places in North America will simply be uninsurable – unless governments step in, and that is truly costly. In a time when there is a housing shortage and costs are already sky-high, how can people build or buy a home if they can’t get insurance?
“As homeowners struggle with affordability challenges across Canada and the US, rising insurance premiums compound their difficulties,” says Craig Stewart, president of IBC. “However, this pales to the financial difficulties they face if insurance is unavailable, they suffer a flood or wildfire, and their home is damaged or destroyed. As climate change–driven events escalate and insured losses increase, insurers are taking a much closer look with improved data and, in some cases, AI, to flag high-risk regions of North America. New builds in high-risk areas will face difficulty in getting insurance and, possibly, financing as these trends continue.”
Insurers are looking at the last El Nino event in 2009-2010, where, in places like California, there were over 6,000 wildfires. Rates are now so high that many homeowners there can’t get affordable insurance.
So, the El Nino storm doesn’t just mean worrying that the roof over your head might get blown away – it’s that you might not be able to get a roof at all.