Floods have been the story of the spring months across Canada, with heavy rainfall and melting snowpacks causing watery destruction in multiple provinces from east to west.
For flood victims in British Columbia (BC) help is on hand from the provincial Disaster Financial Assistance (DFA) program, which pays victims of flooding and other natural disasters up to $300,000 for uninsurable losses.
However, due to recent flood insurance changes in BC, some victims could miss out.
The change came a few years ago when Canadian insurance companies started to offer overland flood insurance, according to a CBC report. Before that, most insurers did not cover damages resulting from water originating outside a home, such as a flooding river or storm surge, which meant almost everybody could apply for disaster assistance.
Overland flood insurance is an optional purchase and is now available to about 90% of homeowners across Canada. Only those who live in the most perilous flood-prone areas are denied the coverage, Insurance Bureau of Canada spokesman Aaron Sutherland told CBC.
The potential problem arises for those who are eligible for overland flood insurance but choose not to buy it. Emergency Management BC (EMBC) has warned those homeowners will no longer be eligible for DFA after a flood.
A 2016 statement from EMBC said: “If a flooding disaster occurs and DFA is authorized for a disaster event, an applicant who could reasonably and readily have purchased overland flood insurance would not be eligible for DFA.”
It’s not yet clear whether any BC flood victims will be denied DFA this year as a result of EMBC’s statement. Johanna Morrow, manager of the recovery and funding program at EMBC said she’s consulting with the Insurance Bureau of Canada to figure out the availability of overland flood insurance.
“Their insurance broker would have to have said to them: ‘You can get overland flood insurance,’ and they would have had to have said: ‘No thanks.’ Then, we would have to look at that quite closely to see if they fit within the eligibility,” Morrow commented.
She added that homeowners applying for DFA should ask their insurance brokers to fill out a form on the EMBC website, to verify whether overland flood was available or not. In the meantime, Morrow advises homeowners to continue applying for DFA.
“We’re taking a very flexible approach, because the insurance is quite new, and it’s not widely available across the province,” she said. “We don’t expect people to switch their insurance company to get the coverage. The goal of our program is to provide as much help as we can. So, we’re not looking for ways to deny people. We’re looking for ways to approve them.”
