Tag: flooding

Author­it­ies defend flood response

Death toll tops 270 as offi­cials accused of fail­ing to warn res­id­ents to evac­u­ate ahead of rains

This article was written by Muhammad Sajjad and Riaz Khan, and was published in the Toronto Star on August 18, 2025.

Res­cuers recovered dozens more bod­ies from the rubble of col­lapsed homes in a north­west­ern dis­trict of Pakistan, bring­ing the death toll to at least 274, as author­it­ies defen­ded their response to the flood­ing and said they did not need any for­eign help at this point.

Heavy rains and flood­ing also killed dozens of people in neigh­bour­ing Kash­mir.

Mohammad Suhail, a spokes­per­son for Pakistan’s emer­gency ser­vice, said 54 bod­ies were found in Buner, a moun­tain­ous area in Khy­ber Pakh­tunkhwa province, where tor­ren­tial rains and cloud­bursts triggered massive flood­ing on Fri­day.

Suhail said vil­la­gers remain miss­ing and search efforts are focused on areas where homes were flattened by tor­rents of water that swept down from the moun­tains, car­ry­ing boulders that smashed into houses like explo­sions.

Author­it­ies have warned of more deluges and pos­sible land­slides between now and Tues­day, urging local admin­is­tra­tions to remain on alert. Higher­than­nor­mal mon­soon rains have lashed the coun­try since June 26 and killed more than 600.

In India­admin­istered Kash­mir, loc­ated across Pakistan’s north­east­ern bor­der, rains triggered more flash floods in two vil­lages in the Kathua dis­trict, killing seven people, offi­cials said Sunday. Res­cuers in Chos­iti vil­lage are still look­ing for dozens of miss­ing people after the area was hit by flash floods last week dur­ing an annual Hindu pil­grim­age. At least 60 people were killed, and some 150 injured. More than 300 oth­ers were res­cued.

Res­id­ents in Buner have accused offi­cials of fail­ing to warn them to evac­u­ate after tor­ren­tial rain and cloud­bursts triggered deadly flood­ing and land­slides. There was no warn­ing broad­cast from mosque loud­speak­ers, a tra­di­tional method in remote areas.

The gov­ern­ment said that while an early warn­ing sys­tem was in place, the sud­den down­pour in Buner was so intense that the deluge struck before res­id­ents could be aler­ted.

Lt.­Gen. Inam Haider, chair of the National Dis­aster Man­age­ment Author­ity, told a hast­ily con­vened news con­fer­ence in Islamabad that Pakistan was exper­i­en­cing shift­ing weather pat­terns because of cli­mate change. Since the mon­soon sea­son began in June, Pakistan has already received 50 per cent more rain­fall than in the same period last year, he added.

He warned that more intense weather could fol­low, with heavy rains fore­cast to con­tinue this month.

Some coun­tries have reached out to Islamabad offer­ing help, but Haider said Pakistan has suf­fi­cient resources and does not require for­eign assist­ance at this time.

Idrees Mah­sud, a dis­aster man­age­ment offi­cial, said Pakistan’s early warn­ing sys­tem used satel­lite imagery and met­eor­o­lo­gical data to send alerts to local author­it­ies. These were shared through the media and com­munity lead­ers. He said mon­soon rains that once only swelled rivers now also triggered urban flood­ing.

An emer­gency ser­vices spokes­per­son in Buner, Mohammad Sohail, said more than half the dam­aged roads in the dis­trict had reopened by Sunday, allow­ing vehicles and heavy machinery to reach cutoff vil­lages. Crews were clear­ing piles of rocks and mud dumped by the floods. They were still using heavy machinery to remove the rubble of col­lapsed homes after fam­il­ies repor­ted that some of their rel­at­ives were miss­ing.

In one of the dead­li­est incid­ents, 24 people from one fam­ily died in the vil­lage of Qadar Nagar when flood­wa­ters swept through their home on the eve of a wed­ding. The head of the fam­ily, Umar Khan, said he sur­vived the floods because he was out of the house at the time. Four of his rel­at­ives have yet to be found.

A girl sits on the rubble of her dam­aged home Sunday fol­low­ing Fri­day's flash flood­ing in Buner, in north­w­est Pakistan.

Crews to resume search for Texas flood victims after pause from heavy rains

This article was written by Gabriela Aoun and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 15, 2025.

Visitors walk past crosses at a makeshift memorial honouring flood victims, on Sunday in Kerrville, Tex.

For a second straight day, rain forecasts hampered the search Monday for people still missing after deadly floods pummelled Texas, as officials made plans to drain reservoirs in the search for victims and lowered the number of people they said remain missing.

While some official crews resumed the search along the Guadalupe River in and around Kerrville in Kerr County, others held off or were ordered to stop because of worries about the forecast and the possibility of more flooding.

Local officials have faced mounting scrutiny over a perceived lack of action and warnings ahead of the July 4 storm that killed at least 132 people.

The first pause in search efforts owing to the weather came Sunday in Texas Hill Country, where the soil is still primed for enhanced water runoff.

At a news conference Monday, state officials said 101 people remain missing, including 97 in the Kerrville area. The other four were swept away in neighbouring counties.

That is a significant drop from the more than 160 people officials had previously said were unaccounted for in Kerr County alone, with 10 more missing in neighbouring areas. State officials did not immediately respond to e-mailed requests for clarity on the big change in the number of missing.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott suggested it has been difficult to pin down a number. Campers, residents or people who registered at RV parks or hotels are easier to account for, he said. Others may have been reported missing by a friend, family member or co-worker. “Even though we are reporting 97 people missing, there is no certainty that all 97 of those people were swept away by the storm,” Mr. Abbott said.

Texas Hill Country is a popular destination for tourists where campers seek out spots along the river amid the rolling hills. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said during a commissioners’ meeting Monday that it’s been difficult to determine exactly how many tourists were in the area when the flooding occurred.

“We’ve heard accounts of trailer after trailer after trailer being swept into the river with families in the them. Can’t find the trailers,” Justice Kelly said. “It’s what we don’t know. We don’t know how many of them there are.”

Justice Kelly said he’d been told of one trailer that was found “completely covered in gravel” 8.2 metres below the surface of the river. He said sonar crews have been searching the river and local lakes and more are expected to arrive.

Commissioner Don Harris said officials plan to drain two reservoir lakes on the river.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Urban Search and Rescue teams fully resumed operations on Monday, said Obed Frometa, FEMA Blue Incident Support Team information officer.

Levi Bizzell, a spokesperson for the Ingram Volunteer Fire Department, which has been organizing about 200 searchers, said the department suspended operations for the day on Monday because several inches of rain were expected to fall on Kerr County by late afternoon.

Kerr County meanwhile advised all volunteers to leave the river area and move to higher ground, saying only those teams working under the direction of Kerr County Emergency Operations Center Unified Command were permitted in the response zone.

Just before daybreak on July 4, destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26 feet (eight metres) on the Guadalupe River, washing away homes and vehicles. Crews in helicopters, boats and drones have been searching for victims.

The floods laid waste to the Hill Country region. The riverbanks and hills of Kerr County are filled with vacation cabins, youth camps and campgrounds, including Camp Mystic, the century-old, all-girls Christian summer camp.

Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash-flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counsellors.

The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in a county that lacked a warning system.

Swift water rescue teams have already been sent to Uvalde, Del Rio and Concan in anticipation of possible flooding in those communities on the Frio River, Nim Kidd, Texas emergency operations chief, said during the Monday news conference.

Search for Texas disaster victims suspended as officials warn of another flash flood

This article was written by Gabriela Aoun and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 14, 2025.

Members of a search and rescue team embrace as they visit a memorial wall for flood victims on Sunday in Kerrville, Tex.

More heavy rains in Texas on Sunday paused a week-long search for victims of catastrophic flooding along the Guadalupe River and led to high-water rescues elsewhere as officials warned that the downpours could again cause waterways to surge.

It was the first time a new round of severe weather had paused the search since the July 4 floods, which killed at least 132 people. Authorities believe more than 160 people may still be missing in Kerr County alone, and 10 more in neighbouring areas.

In Kerrville, where local officials have come under scrutiny over the failure to adequately warn residents about the rising water in the early morning hours of July 4, authorities went door to door to some homes after midnight early Sunday to alert people that flooding was again possible. Authorities also pushed phone alerts to those in the area.

By late Sunday afternoon, the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office announced that search teams in the western part of that county could resume their efforts. But more than 161 kilometres north in San Saba County, the floods damaged about 100 homes and knocked down untold lengths of cattle fencing, said Ashley Johnson, chief executive of the Hill Country Community Action Association, a local non-profit.

“Anything you can imagine in a rural community was damaged,” she said.

“Our blessing is it was daylight and we knew it was coming.”

Governor Greg Abbott said on X that the state was making rescues in San Saba, Lampasas and Schleicher counties and that evacuations were taking place in a handful of others. Texas Task Force 1, a joint state and federal urban search and rescue team, had rescued dozens of people in the Lampasas area, Mr. Abbott said.

County officials ordered everyone living in flood-prone areas near the San Saba River to evacuate. Ms. Johnson said people were being moved to the San Saba Civic Center, which has become a safe, high place for people to receive aid and shelter.

“Everyone is in some way personally affected by this,” she said. “Everyone is just doing what they can to help their neighbours.”

The weather system brought multiple rounds of heavy rains and slowmoving storms across a widespread area, pushing rivers and streams over their banks.

Emergency crews rescued one motorist who was left stranded in waisthigh rapids on a submerged bridge over the Bosque River and leaned onto the vehicle for support as crews tried to reach him with life jackets.

“He drove into it and didn’t realize how deep it was,” said Jeff Douglas, president of the McGregor Volunteer Fire Department. “Luckily he was able to stand next to the vehicle.”

In the west Texas city of Sonora, authorities called for evacuations of some neighbourhoods owing to rising flood waters. In a video posted Sunday afternoon on Facebook, Mayor Juanita Gomez said some water rescues had taken place and a temporary shelter for residents had been opened in the city’s civic centre.

The floods laid waste to the Hill Country region of Texas. The riverbanks and hills of Kerr County are filled with vacation cabins, youth camps and campgrounds, including Camp Mystic, the century-old, all-girls Christian summer camp.

Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counsellors.

The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in a county that lacked a warning system.

Why flash floods are expec­ted to hap­pen more often

This article was written by Marco Chown Oved and was published in the Toronto Star on July 8, 2025.

In the antho­logy of extreme weather exacer­bated by cli­mate change, few events are more hor­rific than flash floods.

A hard rain is fun­nelled by steep slopes, trans­form­ing brooks into creeks, creeks into rivers and rivers into raging tor­rents that rip trees out by their roots and tear houses from their found­a­tions, cre­at­ing a mov­ing debris field of death.

In Texas, this geo­graphic mul­ti­plier effect turned 50 cen­ti­metres of rain into an eight­metre rise in the Guada­lupe River in only 45 minutes.

It’s no won­der that flash flood­ing has been called a “rain bomb.”

Flood­wa­ters forced people to escape their homes by swim­ming out win­dows, only to find them­selves caught up in a mael­strom, dodging float­ing cars and tele­phone poles.

More than 100 people have been killed, includ­ing 28 chil­dren, and offi­cials warn the death toll could rise as more miss­ing are found.

Are flash floods get­ting worse?

While flash floods are not uncom­mon and have long occurred around the world, they’re get­ting more destruct­ive and deadly due to a con­flu­ence of three factors: cli­mate change, pop­u­la­tion growth and land use, accord­ing to Slobodan Simonovic, pro­fessor of civil engin­eer­ing at West­ern Uni­versity and dir­ector of engin­eer­ing stud­ies at the uni­versity’s Insti­tute for Cata­strophic Loss Reduc­tion.

“The phys­ics is very clear: with global warm­ing, you have higher tem­per­at­ures, you are stor­ing much more mois­ture in the air and that mois­ture comes back in the form of very intens­ive storms,” he said.

“Com­bine that with the geo­graphy of the region that makes things worse: steep hills, rocky land, no absorp­tion at all. So the rain flows very fast into the creeks and rivers, rais­ing the water levels,” he added.

“Add land use and pop­u­la­tions liv­ing in high­risk areas and you don’t just have a flood­ing event, you have a dis­aster.”

Are flash floods get­ting more fre­quent?

Due to its steep val­leys and lime­stone bed­rock that pre­vents the soil from absorb­ing the rain, Hill Coun­try in Texas has a long his­tory of deadly flash floods, they have also recently hit areas less habitu­ated to the risk, such as Ger­many and Aus­tria.

“If you look down the road and fol­low these big events, it is becom­ing very clear that we are see­ing them much more often. And they’re becom­ing much more ser­i­ous,” Simonovic added.

In Canada, parts of the Rocky Moun­tains are at risk of flash flood­ing, though Simonovic stressed few people live in the affected areas.

Can you pre­pare for a flash flood?

Unlike reg­u­lar flood­ing, which can be mit­ig­ated with sump pumps, or wild­fires where you can help pro­tect your house by installing a metal roof or clear­ing back the bush, it’s basic­ally impossible to pre­pare for a flash flood — all you can do is flee.

As a res­ult, the best pre­par­a­tion is good fore­cast­ing and send­ing out early warn­ing.

“You gain time by provid­ing inform­a­tion early so that you can evac­u­ate people from the poten­tial areas that will be affected,” Simonovic said.

But accur­ate pre­dic­tion and adequate warn­ing are very com­plex prob­lems, said Reza Najafi, a pro­fessor of civil engin­eer­ing and head of the Hydro­cli­mate Extremes and Cli­mate Change Lab at West­ern Uni­versity. “While improve­ments in fore­cast­ing have helped, we often get the mag­nitudes wrong and what may have been pre­dicted as a heavy rain becomes a tor­ren­tial storm,” he said.

`A com­plex prob­lem — and a global one’

While flood warn­ings get issued, they often don’t get to the most affected people, or if they do, those people often ignore them.

“If you live in Texas where flood­ing hap­pens so often, you may under­es­tim­ate the com­ing weather, think­ing you live far enough away from the river to be safe,” Najafi said. “Con­versely, in areas that have not exper­i­enced flood­ing events — like in Dubai, which had a major flood last year even though it’s in a desert — people don’t know what to do. This is a com­plex prob­lem — and a global one.”

Cli­mate change is not only increas­ing the fre­quency of extreme pre­cip­it­a­tion events, it’s also push­ing them into areas where they’ve never happened before, Najafi said.

Areas where imper­meable con­crete and pave­ment mimic rocky soil — like cit­ies — are at much higher risk for flash flood­ing in the future. “If there is lack of absorp­tion, the incom­ing pre­cip­it­a­tion turns into run­off very quickly. So in urban areas, this kind of flash flood is a major issue,” Najafi said.

Unlike rural flash flood zones, however, there are meas­ures that muni­cip­al­it­ies can take to min­im­ize flash flood­ing before it hap­pens, includ­ing bury­ing cisterns and design­ing parks and green space to col­lect and hold water.

“They increase the absorp­tion. They increase the delay to the peak of the flow. All the pro­gress­ive muni­cip­al­it­ies, they are adopt­ing these meas­ures.”

Flash floods are get­ting more destruct­ive due to a con­flu­ence of three factors: cli­mate change, pop­u­la­tion growth and land use

Experts say disaster was not a one-off, push for better warning signs

This article was written by Jennifer Yang and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 7, 2025.

National Weather Service has identified central part of state as most flash-flood-prone area in the U.S.

The devastation caused by the past week’s flash flooding in Texas has sent shock waves, with local officials insisting that it was an extreme event nobody saw coming.

But when flood researcher Nasir Gharaibeh first saw the news about the natural disaster, he found himself feeling upset but unsurprised.

“Nothing in terms of the likelihood of something like this happening was surprising to me,” said the professor at Texas A&M University, who studies flash floods and their causes, in an interview.

“That kind of storm, in that kind of location, will happen. And it will result in human casualties.”

On Friday, an intense downpour dumped months’ worth of rain over Texas’s Hill Country region. It caused destructive, fast-moving waters to rise 26 feet on the Guadalupe River, washing away trees, homes and vehicles.

Authorities and elected officials have told reporters that they did not expect such an intense downpour and were taken aback by the ferocity of the flood. But flash floods are a known risk in central Texas, which the National Weather Service has identified as the most flash-flood-prone area in the country.

And no state has more floodrelated deaths than Texas. More than 1,000 Texans died in floods between 1959 and 2019, according to research conducted by Hatim Sharif, a flood expert with the University of Texas at San Antonio. (It’s a total that far outstrips Louisiana’s 693, the state with the second-highest death toll.)

The vast majority of flood-related deaths occur in flash-flooding events, according to Prof. Gharaibeh. And within Texas, nowhere is more susceptible than Flash Flood Alley, the swath of land that includes Hill Country and encompasses dozens of counties stretching from north of Dallas to the region west of San Antonio.

The National Weather Service defines a flash flood as flooding that begins within six hours of heavy rainfall. Prof. Gharaibeh says he’s heard it described as “a ‘rain bomb,’ which is really what it is.”

There are three factors that put localities at risk of flash flooding, he noted: steep terrain, intense storms and soil conditions that exacerbate flood risk. Hill Country sits at the intersection of all three.

As its name suggests, the region’s topography is defined by its steep-sloped hills, which are interwoven with shallow, winding creeks. This landscape creates a magnetic draw for campers and outdoor enthusiasts, but also increases the risk of flash flooding. In heavy downpours, water will barrel down the steep hillsides and flood the creeks that feed the Guadalupe River.

When those creeks converge on a river, it can create a surge of water powerful enough to sweep away houses and cars: “You can get walls of water coming down,” local meteorologist Cary Burgess said in a 2017 flood-awareness video.

The region is also home to the Balcones Escarpment, a row of cliffs and steep hills created by a geologic fault, Prof. Sharif, who is a hydrologist and civil engineer. When warm air rushes up from the Gulf of Mexico, it condenses and dumps moisture into the area, he explained.

Meanwhile, the soil is dry and shallow, with just a few inches sitting on top of limestone, he added: “It gets soaked very quickly. There’s no room for the soil to absorb a lot of water.”

Mr. Burgess, in the 2017 video, warned that just three or four inches of rain at one time can cause a “real serious problem” in Hill Country. But in Friday’s early hours, the communities along the Guadalupe River received at least 10 inches.

A river gauge at Hunt, Texas near Mystic Camp shows how rapidly the water levels rose, Prof. Sharif wrote in The Conversation. At 3 a.m., water was rising by one foot every five minutes; within an hour and a half, it had already risen more than 20 feet.

A 2017 paper published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society analyzed flashflood fatalities between 1996 and 2014, noting that late-evening events were the most devastating in terms of injuries and deaths.

But while fewer flash flooding events were associated with campsites and recreational areas, they lead to more losses per event compared with other scenarios, the study found. In 1987, another flash flood in Hill Country also killed summer campers after 10 teenagers died while being evacuated from Pot O’ Gold Christian camp.

Prof. Sharif said he hopes that data will be collected from this latest flash flood to investigate what went wrong so that future disasters can be mitigated.

He also believes that early warning systems need to be improved, incorporating rainfall forecasting as well as sophisticated hydrologic models that can better predict the impact on the ground.

“If we have six inches [of rain], which areas will be flooded? How wide will the river become?” he said, adding that perhaps this type of flood modelling could establish rainfall thresholds that would trigger evacuations in specific areas.

The National Weather Service said it did issue a flood watch for the area on Thursday afternoon, which it upgraded to a warning overnight, meaning floods were imminent or occurring. But those notices would have arrived while many people were sleeping, Prof. Sharif noted.

And Kerr County judge Rob Kelly told CBS News that his region does “not have a warning system” for alerting local residents.

This should no longer be acceptable in high-risk regions such as Flash Flood Alley, Prof. Gharaibeh said.

“You know that something like this has happened in the past, and it will happen again. Why don’t we have a better warning system to people in this region?” he said.

“It needs to be quick, and it needs to have different warning signs so people can tell: This is serious, we need to do something.”

As its name suggests, the region’s topography is defined by its steep-sloped hills, which are interwoven with shallow, winding creeks. This landscape creates a magnetic draw for campers and outdoor enthusiasts, but also increases the risk of flash flooding.

Death toll mounts fol­low­ing Texas flood­ing

This article was written by the Associated Press and was published in the Toronto Star on July 5, 2025.

Months worth of heavy rain fell in a mat­ter of hours on Texas Hill Coun­try, leav­ing at least 13 people dead and many more unac­coun­ted for Fri­day, includ­ing more than 20 girls attend­ing a sum­mer camp, as search teams con­duc­ted boat and heli­copter res­cues in fast­mov­ing flood­wa­ters.

Des­per­ate pleas peppered social media as loved ones sought any inform­a­tion about people caught in the flood zone. At least 25 cen­ti­metres of rain poured down overnight in cent­ral Kerr County, caus­ing flash flood­ing of the Guada­lupe River.

Author­it­ies stressed the situ­ation was still devel­op­ing and the death toll could change, with res­cue oper­a­tions ongo­ing for an unspe­cified num­ber miss­ing.

Lt.­Gov. Dan Patrick said six to 10 bod­ies had been found so far. Around the same time, Kerr County Sher­iff Larry Leitha repor­ted 13 people had died in the flood­ing.

“Some are adults, some are chil­dren,” Patrick said dur­ing a news con­fer­ence.

“Again, we don’t know where those bod­ies came from.”

Judge Rob Kelly, the chief elec­ted offi­cial in Kerr County, said author­it­ies were still work­ing to identify those who died.

“Most of them, we don’t know who they are,” Kelly said dur­ing a news con­fer­ence.

On the Kerr County sher­iff ‘s office Face­book page, people pleaded for help find­ing loved ones and pos­ted pic­tures of them. Patrick said at least 400 people were on the ground help­ing in the response. Nine res­cue teams, 14 heli­copters and 12 drones were being used in the search, and Patrick said some people were being res­cued from trees.

About 23 of the roughly 750 girls attend­ing Camp Mys­tic were among those who were unac­coun­ted for, Patrick said.

Search crews were doing “whatever we can do to find every­one we can,” he said.

As much as 25 cen­ti­metres of heavy rain poured down in just a few hours overnight in cent­ral Kerr County, caus­ing flash flood­ing of the Guada­lupe River.

Home renovations can lower your insurance

This article was written by Salmaan Farooqui and Jeff McIntosh of the Canadian Press and was published in the Globe & Mail on March 17, 2025.

A hail storm in Calgary in 2020 damaged homes and flooded streets. A 2024 Calgary hailstorm was Canada’s most expensive weather event that year, leading to roughly $3-billion in insurable losses.

Protecting your home from extreme weather can cut costs

Gordon Wells expected to save money on maintenance when he switched from fancy cedar shingles to cheaper asphalt ones on his Calgary home last year. But he didn’t expect the nearly $800 refund he got when he informed his insurance company about the change.

The refund came because Mr. Wells’ new shingles are impact resistant, meaning they’ll better protect his home from hailstorms that can often pummel Calgary. A massive hailstorm last year in the city was Canada’s most expensive weather event in 2024, leading to roughly $3-billion in insurable losses, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

In fact, 2024 was the most expensive year for insurance companies in Canada on record, with insurance insurers paying out $8.5-billion, an increase from the previous record of $6-billion in 2016. The IBC says consumers can expect their home insurance rates to increase as a result, especially in provinces such as British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec, which have been hit particularly hard with floods and fires.

Homeowners aren’t helpless in their ability to contain those rising costs. Experts say there are specific renovations you can have done, such as Mr. Wells’s shingle replacement, that can lower your insurance premiums. In his case, he was refunded more than a third of his insurance premium for 2024 and he’s waiting to see what the discount will be in future years.

Craig Stewart, vice-president of climate change and federal issues at IBC, said the savings on insurance won’t always be so large, and that the primary reason homeowners make these changes is to be pro-active and protect themselves from the massive costs that come with major damage to your home.

“Insurers believe that incentives are of limited value. They think that most people are going to protect their home because they want to protect their home,” Mr. Stewart said.

“The incentives provide a little bit of stimulus, but based upon our experience, they’re really secondary.”

This is especially true when it comes to protecting against flooding, since flood insurance is particularly expensive and rarely covers the full value of your home and belongings.

We spoke to experts from the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation (an organization that seeks to educate communities and homeowners on protecting their homes from severe weather), insurers Co-operators Group Ltd., and the IBC to compile a list of home renovations that could lower your premiums.

But experts say you should notify your insurer of any improvements you make, because providers are increasingly offering incentives for all sorts of renovations that protect from severe weather. The Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation also has a comprehensive list of measures you can take against flood and fires that we have linked.

RENOVATIONS THAT CAN LOWER YOUR PREMIUMS Weatherproof shingles

Changing the type of roof shingles you have can be one of the most effective renovations for reducing your home insurance premiums because they can protect against hail, wind and fire.

Michelle Laidlaw, associate vice-president of Co-operators’ national product portfolio, says using a Class G shingle, which protects from all three of those elements, can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 more than standard shingles depending on the size of your roof.

In Mr. Wells’s case, asphalt shingles were both cheaper to purchase and cheaper to maintain than the cedar shingles he had.

Realtors have also told him that asphalt shingles are improving resale value in Calgary homes, since hailstorms more easily damage cedar shingle roofing.

While Co-operators couldn’t provide the average insurance savings for weather-resilient shingles, Mr. Stewart said one Canadian provider offers discounts between 2.5 per cent to 5 per cent for impact-resistant shingles.

Sump pumps, backwater valves and battery backups.

There are two pieces of equipment that are the most crucial line of defence for a home in flooding situations.

A sump pump pumps excess water in your basement or around your foundation away from your home. A backwater valve prevents sewage from the municipal water system from backflowing into your home during a flooding event, which is a common and damaging event during a flood.

Kathryn Bakos, managing director of finance and resilience at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, said a battery backup for your sump pump is also important, since power outages are a common occurrence during flooding events.

She said the cost of a sump pump can be roughly $1,000, while a backwater valve can be around $3,000.

Mr. Stewart said one Canadian insurer provides discounts of between 5 per cent and 15 per cent on the flood insurance portion of a homeowner’s premium if they have these devices installed. He said the average flood insurance premium is roughly $200 a year, but that number can vary wildly depending on the risk of flooding in your area.

While a sump pump and backwater valve may not always save you large amount of money on your insurance, it can save you from extensive damage – some of which may not be covered by insurance since flood coverage is usually quite limited.

FireSmart certification

FireSmart is a program that seeks to help prepare homes in the event of wildfires in Canadian communities and has an extensive list of measures you can take to prevent wildfires from damaging your home and spreading through a town.

Ms. Laidlaw said FireSmart can do an assessment of individual homes and provide certificates for homes that meet their standards. A certificate can lead to discounts on insurance, but she wasn’t able to specify how large those discounts can be.

“Co-operators does have a program with FireSmart where if the home does have the certification, a discount does apply; what that could look like depends on the type of risk and where the house is located,” Ms. Laidlaw said.

Some of the measures involved in a FireSmart certification can be as simple as moving wood piles and other combustibles away from your home, to renovating with fire-resistant materials on your home’s roof and siding.

Moisture detection system

A system that detects water in your home, particularly in your basement, can help you respond to a flood situation faster and prevent further damage to your home and property. Ms. Laidlaw said it can also save you money on your home insurance premiums.

The Intact Centre for Climate Adaptation said these systems can cost less than $250 to install in your home.

Why cities can’t cope with extreme rain

Experts say engineers who rely on historical methods to plan safeguards must look into future

This article was written by Nono Shen and was published in the Toronto Star on November 3, 2024.

The recent deluge in North Vancouver is an example of how municipal infrastructure is struggling to keep up with demands of a fast-changing climate, as the frequency of extreme events escalates, and their severity worsens.

Heavy rain isn’t unusual for the community of Deep Cove in North Vancouver, but when Ashifa Saferali saw an e-bike floating down the middle of the street she knew this storm was something different.

Saferali is the owner of Honey Doughnuts and Goodies, a fixture in the community where she has lived and worked for almost three decades.

She’s been through flash floods in the area before, but nothing like the torrent on Oct. 19, the day of B.C.’s provincial election.

“There is a creek up the road from us and I don’t know if that creek was backed up with leaves or debris, but it was coming down really fast, and within an hour, the flow of the water was just gushing down the hill and going straight down,” said Saferali, “It was pretty crazy.”

By the time it was over, 350 millimetres of rain had fallen in North Vancouver, turning streets into rivers that plowed through waterfront homes, piling up boulders and gravel, and triggering a local state of emergency.

The district told residents in six homes along the waterfront that they needed to evacuate.

The deluge is an example of how municipal infrastructure is struggling to keep up with demands of a fast-changing climate, as the frequency of extreme events escalates, and their severity worsens.

Engineers who once looked back at history to plan safeguards instead must look into the future, said Shahria Alam, a professor of civil engineering at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus.

He gave the example of municipal engineers designing a storm water drainage system, who might look at rainfall stretching back 50 years.

But weather patterns are changing fast.

“Which means that the system that you have designed will not be able to accommodate such huge additional water, and then, of course, your system will fail and disaster takes place,” said Alam.

“Unfortunately, these kinds of incidents will keep happening because of climate change.”

Some communities are aware of the challenges and preparing for it.

The City of Vancouver says in its climate change adaptation strategy that by the 2050s, average fall rainfall is expected to increase by 12 per cent.

But more worrying from an infrastructure perspective is the increasing prevalence and severity of “extreme rainfall events.” It says rainfall so severe it would have occurred only once every 20 years, from 1981-2010, will occur twice as often by the 2050s.

The average amount falling in a single day during such an event will increase 20 per cent to 86 millimetres, it says.

The city says it will prepare by studying steep slopes that are at risk of instability, and managing rainwater to better allow it to be filtered and stored.

But even cities that have been diligently upgrading infrastructure over the years can see their drainage systems overwhelmed.

District of North Vancouver Mayor Mike Little said the city had spent millions upgrading infrastructure, including the Gallant Creek catch basin system in Deep Cove that had experienced many heavy rainfalls over the past ten years.

But the Oct. 19 storm was so intense it paralyzed the system by clogging it with massive amounts of debris.

Little recalled watching city crews use a backhoe that day as they tried to clear the catch basin on the steep Gallant Avenue, pulling out “six- to eight-foot-long woody debris.”

“Even though it had been cleared ahead of time, there was just so much coming down that it still locked,” said Little, whose own basement was flooded.

Honey Doughnuts is on Gallant Avenue. “You could not even walk. If you crossed, the water would be at your knees,” said owner Saferali.

Across the street, the manager of the Deep Cove Collective gift shop, Heather Radant, said she was left soaking wet as she fought vainly to keep the rising waters out, barricading the store with plywood, sandwich boards, and sandbags provided by city staff and neighbours.

She said the scene as the store flooded was “wild.”

“I was thinking ‘man, how do I just stay here and keep trying to keep the drains clear? How long is the water going to keep coming?’ I didn’t even know,” said Radant.

Alam said the ideal answer, long term, is not more concrete infrastructure.

He pointed instead to “climate-resilient” solutions, such as rainwater harvesting and installing “green roofs” on buildings, covered in plants and soil, to accumulate and retain moisture.

New storm water-handling technology known as continuous deflective separation could better screen debris and sediment from runoff water, said Alam.

But solutions can be pricey. “I have seen in many places, they are working hard and doing upgrades. But not all cities have those kinds of resources and many cities are struggling to keep up,” said Alam.

Flood waters recede after devastation in Hungary

This article was written by Eric Reguly and was published in the Globe & Mail on September 24, 2024.

No deaths reported in Hungarian storms, but at least 24 people died in other parts of Europe

The Hungarian government has declared the worst of the flooding triggered by last week’s Storm Boris, which produced record rainfall and killed more than two dozen people in Central and Eastern Europe, to be over. In Budapest, the Danube River flood waters were receding Monday.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the flood waters along the Danube, the second longest river in Europe, extending from Germany to the Black Sea, were still expected to peak Monday in the small city of Baja, about 200 kilometres south of Budapest. “There are things we’re glad to see come to an end, and flooding is one of them,” he said.

In Budapest, the water levels had dropped more than 70 centimetres by Monday but were still high. On the Pest side of the city, which lies on the eastern bank of the river, the riverside roadway and tram line remained well submerged.

Rouf Farrhat, who operates a ticket kiosk next to the 19th-century Chain Bridge, said he was relieved the water was receding. “Four days ago, the water was very high and had reached just under the bridge and covered the stairs down to the water,” he said. “All the restaurants by the river closed, and the boat traffic had to stop.”

Mr. Orban said the “third-degree alert” areas – those under the highest-level flood warning – had been reduced to 223 square kilometres by Monday. Over the weekend, flood-defence operations had covered about 700 square kilometres, down from a peak of more 750.

There were no reported deaths in the Hungarian floods, which were the worst since 2013. The damage was extensive in other parts of Europe, with at least 24 reported deaths and several people missing. Entire villages were swamped and abandoned, and hundreds of thousands of residents were left without electricity.

The devastation started after Storm Boris hit on Sept. 11. The storm was caused by a low-pressure system driven by cold Arctic air that mixed with warm air from Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, where sea-level temperatures had reached a record after an exceedingly hot summer. The average European land temperature in June, July and August was 1.54 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average, exceeding the previous record from 2022.

Many climate scientists have said that extreme precipitation events are likely caused by greater evaporation rates brought on by human-induced global warming.

The flooding first hit Austria and Czechia, then spread to Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary and Northern Italy. In some Alpine areas the rain turned to snowfall. On the Austria-Germany border, an avalanche buried one person, who remains missing. In Czechia, some 200 rivers burst their banks. Several people drowned in flooded apartments. In Prague, water entered the metro system and forced it to close.

Southwestern Poland received half a year of rainfall in three days. Ten people were reported dead in the flooding. On Sept. 15, Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared a state of natural disaster. In Romania, seven people were reported killed in villages overwhelmed by flooding.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen late last week announced €10-billion in funds for EU countries that suffered extensive damage.

On Monday, Amazon said it has “mobilized our logistics infrastructure, inventory, teams and technology to provide rapid assistance in crisis areas” hit by the floods. The shipments, some done with the local Red Cross, included hot meals, blankets, clothing, cots, hygiene kits and flashlights. Drones were also deployed to map out areas still inundated by flood waters.