Insurers can learn from Slave Lake fires, says Intact Insurance President
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Narrator: The May wildfires that ravaged the Northern Alberta community of Slave Lake caused an estimated $700 million in insured losses, making it the second costliest insured disaster in Canadian history.
Immediately after the fires started, several insurance companies mobilized to the area, setting up claims centres and doing business in the middle of a disaster zone. Intact Insurance set up three mobile claims centres to assist its Slave Lake customers. Now, nearly two months later, Intact Insurance’s President Louis Gagnon said there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Louis Gagnon: It’s a disaster. I think what we have first to think about is people that lost their homes, lost everything. We have to try to make sure that we reassure those people; we make them feel like solutions are coming. It’s going to be a big task of rebuilding. We are at it. We’ve been at it since the first day. I think it’s going as good as the people suffering those things could tell you.
On our side, I think we will do – and as I mentioned from day one – we will do everything we can. This is why we exist. We talk many times about the financial loss and the financial aspect, but that’s our business. And you know what? If you cannot shine and if you cannot do good during those periods, I don’t think you should be in that business. That’s why we are in that business and we’ll do, as I mentioned, everything we can to make sure the lives of those people are back the way they were before.
It’s also, I would say, a lesson for all of us to make sure that we use more prevention, that we prepare ourselves a bit better for stuff that we thought couldn’t exist or that wouldn’t happen. I think prevention is also going to become [important] for water damage, for large disasters. I think we will have to be more aware and I think we will have a role going forward as an industry to educate the people, to make sure that they understand consequences of living in a wooded area, living on a coast, living on the riverbed. Those are things that I think will have to be more out there and I think we will have, as an industry, a role to play in communicating those things.
