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Unprecedented Wildfires Devastate Canada, Leave Eastern U.S. Blanketed in Smoke

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Wildfire season has started two months early in Canada, and the devastating scale of the blazes is already unprecedented. Over 400 fires have caused roughly 10 million acres of burn damage so far, and have blanketed a wide swath of North America in smoke, creating orange skies and toxic levels of air pollution for communities all the way from Canada to the Southeastern United States. During the first week of June, New York had the worst air quality on Earth, and the air quality reached hazardous levels in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. While it has begun to clear in the Northeast, the fires are ongoing and the air quality may continue to change in the days and weeks to come.

Find more answers to common questions about the wildfires below:

Where is all the smoke coming from?

Unfortunately, there is not just one answer for that, as there are multiple regional fires breaking out seemingly all over Canada and even the United States. However, the current air quality issues are coming from out-of-control wildfires in Quebec and Ottawa, Canada. There are also wildfires breaking out in at least six U.S. states, including Missouri, Kansas and New Mexico, but these do not appear to be involved in the air quality crisis.

According to the Associated Press and Canadian officials, the fires in Canada mark the start of what is expected to be Canada’s worst wildfire season ever due to drier ground than usual, which led the fires to accelerate very quickly.

“Right now, with the manpower we have, we can fight about 40 fires at the same time,” said Francois Legault, premier of Quebec, in an interview with Reuters. “But we have 150 fires, so we have to make sure that we focus where the problems are more urgent.”

In total, there are 425 active fires throughout Canada, according to Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, and 232 are considered out of control. About 120,000 Canadians have been displaced from their homes due to emergency evacuations, with the most recent being from remote parts of Northern Quebec, according to Reuters. There are fires in nearly all of Canada’s provinces. The current wildfires in the U.S. have led to no evacuations thus far.

Why is the U.S. experiencing poor air quality?

To put it simply, the Northeastern region of the U.S. and the rest of the Eastern seaboard as far down as South Carolina are stuck in a slow-moving weather pattern that is carrying the smoke and smell from the Canadian fires southward. According to Politico, 13 U.S. states are under air quality alerts, impacting over 55 million people.

The AP noted that smoke from various Canadian fires has actually been showing up in parts of the U.S. since May, but with new fires recently breaking out in Quebec, the air quality has increasingly gotten worse in both Canada and the U.S. The hazy, orange-tinted skies and smoke smell along the eastern U.S. are expected to dissipate soon but may still be present through the weekend.

How do the fires impact businesses?

The fires affect certain industries more than others. Outdoor work like construction, sporting events, primary schools, park services and zoos are continuing to pay close attention to the air quality and have suspended outdoor operations accordingly while air quality is at such dangerous levels. Many professional sporting events have been cancelled. The New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia Phillies and Detroit Tigers have postponed baseball games throughout the week, with minor league baseball teams, soccer teams and WNBA teams following their lead.

During the course of the week, airports have been taking various precautions, with JFK, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty International Airport grounding flights, shutting down inbound flights and changing flight schedules. Similar precautions were taken at Philadelphia International Airport. Because this is an ongoing situation, these measures and flight operations remain in flux.

How do we manage the risk?

In terms of immediate action, experts recommend staying indoors, wearing a mask if going outside and keeping windows and doors closed until the air quality alerts are lifted. By the end of the week, New York City’s air quality is expected to be upgraded from “unhealthy” to “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” To find out about your specific area, visit AirNow.gov.

Looking longer-term, the current fires are a good reminder that natural disasters stretch far beyond hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes, especially as the climate continues to change. A recent study found that increases in burned forest area across the western U.S. and southwestern Canada over the last several decades can be linked to significant human-caused climate change.

For businesses, take this as a reminder to examine how your organization will handle fallout from wildfires, for example, reviewing your property insurance, business interruption coverage, disaster recovery plans or emergency communications procedures. The following resources from Risk Management can help organizations consider the many risks wildfires and other climate change-related extreme weather events pose to businesses and communities, and can help boost disaster preparedness for these devastating events.

More resources:

Recovery Tips in the Wake of Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Fiona

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Across the Caribbean, Florida, and up the Eastern seaboard to Atlantic Canada, communities are facing devastation from a recent—and ongoing—spate of mid-season hurricanes.

Ian follows right on the heels of catastrophic damage from Hurricane Fiona. In the Caribbean, 20% of residents in Puerto Rico are still without power after Hurricane Fiona, and the island took another pummeling from Hurricane Ian while it was a Category 4 storm. To the north, post-tropical storm Fiona inflicted catastrophic damage across parts of eastern Canada last week, causing devastating property damage and leaving hundreds of thousands of Canadians without power. While it is too early for complete estimates, ratings agency DBRS Morningstar projected the insured losses may fall in the range of $300 million to $700 million. According to Patrick Douville, DBRS’s vice president of insurance, “Fiona will likely be one of the largest catastrophic events in history for Atlantic Canada.”

Once it is safe to do so, risk managers will have considerable work to do to help their organizations and communities recover.

Dalton advised, “Additional steps businesses should take include engaging a professional claims preparation firm to help document the claim, preparing a daily timeline of impact and changes to operational activities, asking for a cash advance, and setting up a cost tracking code and/or general ledger account to capture incident-related expenses. If it’s a contingent loss, meaning operations are down because of physical damage to a customer or supplier, ask that customer or supplier send you documentation of their physical damage and ask them to communicate with you as much as possible.”

In the July/August cover story from Risk Management Magazine, “Hurricane Claims: Key Tips to Minimize Losses and Maximize Recovery,”attorneys Andrea DeField and Alice Weeks offered guidance on steps for risk and insurance professionals to take before, during and after hurricanes, including hurricane preparation and response checklists.

For organizations impacted by this season’s storms, the following post-storm tips can help risk professionals navigate disaster recovery and the claims management process:

Post-Storm Checklist

  1. Gather insurance policies and related insurance records. If your policy was destroyed or is lost, contact your insurance company or agent/broker to request a copy.
  2. Contact other business partners who may have copies of your insurance policies and records, such as attorneys and accountants.
  3. Give written notice to your broker and insurer immediately. Notice should provide the following basic information:
    1. Name and address of insured
    1. Location of loss
    1. Date and time of loss
    1. Contact name, phone and fax number
    1. Brief description of the loss
  4. Acquire copies of police or fire reports from your local police or fire department, if applicable. If individuals caused damage to the premises or stole anything in the wake of the disaster, obtain a separate police report about the damage or losses or request that additional information be added to the initial report.
  5. Secure vital records and ledgers. Ensure that your accounting department opens a separate general ledger for hurricane-related expenses.
  6. Collect photos or videos as proof of damage. Ensure these are taken before any mitigations are implemented so that they accurately capture the aftermath and losses.
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  7. To the extent possible, take steps to mitigate any further damage once the storm has passed.
  8. If you have not already, retain a forensic accountant to begin preparing your business income and extra expense loss calculations.
  9. Prepare a proof of loss. A proof of loss provides details identifying the property destroyed or damaged, and documents the amount of loss incurred. Generally, any information substantiating the claim can become part of your proof of claim, including photos, videos, receipts and records. Check with your insurer for the specific information required as some companies may ask for a detailed list of documents or require you to fill out a specific proof of loss form.
  10. Submit proof of loss, photos, and reports to your insurer. Be sure to check any time limitations on the submission of a proof of loss and request an extension, if needed.
  11. Assist with the insurance company’s investigation. Property policies typically allow the insurer to conduct a reasonable investigation of the claim and require the insured’s cooperation. This may be in a provision titled “Duties in the Event of Loss” that allows the insurer to interview the policyholder claimants in a process called an “examination under oath.” The policy may also require the insured to exhibit the property, take reasonable steps to protect it, and generally cooperate with the insurer’s investigation. The insurer’s requests for information must typically be considered reasonable, however. A policyholder’s failure to reasonably cooperate could be used by the insurer as a defense to coverage.

Tornadoes Devastate Midwest and Southern States

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Last week, a series of tornadoes ripped across the Midwest and Southern United States, killing dozens and crippling infrastructure in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee. While Karen Clark & Company has estimated that the insured loss from the tornado outbreak will be about $3 billion, and credit rating agency Fitch predicted that losses would total $5 billion, Dr. Joel N. Myers, AccuWeather founder and CEO, estimated that the tornadoes are expected to cost about $18 billion in total damage and economic loss. Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications at The Insurance Information Institute, said, “Based on preliminary assessments of the extensive property damage we are seeing across multiple states, this weekend’s tornado outbreak has the potential to be the costliest on record in the U.S.”

As of Monday, 88 deaths across the region had been confirmed, but over 100 people are also missing, which means the death count may be higher. The cyclones killed more than 70 people in Kentucky, the hardest-hit state, leaving thousands homeless and knocking out power for more than 25,000 in the western region of the state. Additionally, 10,000 Kentucky homes and businesses reported being without water, and another 17,000 were under boil-water advisories, according to the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management.

Across the entire affected region, 750,000 customers were left without electricity. These outages have complicated search and rescue efforts, as rescue workers excavated destroyed buildings, searching for people who are still missing. In Mayfield, Kentucky, for example, the city’s main fire station and multiple police stations were inoperable, and the city was scrambling to find new ways to field emergency calls.

Also in Mayfield, at least eight people died at a Mayfield Consumer Products scented candle factory after workers reportedly pleaded with supervisors to let them leave the building after warning sirens sounded and an initial twister had passed with little damage, only to be threatened with firing if they did not continue working. Over 100 workers were trapped inside the building after the next tornado leveled it. Several survivors have already filed a lawsuit against the company, citing “flagrant indifference” to worker safety, and that the company “knew or should have known about the expected tornado and the danger of serious bodily injuries and death to its employees if its employees were required to remain at its place of business during the pendency of the expected tornado.”

Another tornado struck an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, killing six people and injuring another. Amazon claims that it took all necessary precautions, but family members of victims have alleged that the company prioritized productivity over worker safety by not heeding tornado warnings and not adequately preparing employees for emergency weather safety responses. Amazon pledged to help workers and their families affected by the tragedy by donating $1 million to the Edwardsville Community Foundation, a charitable trust that benefits regional communities. OSHA is reportedly investigating the Amazon warehouse, and Kentucky state regulators are investigating the Mayfield Consumer Products event.

While an Amazon spokesperson noted that the company’s warehouse was up to code, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker also promised an investigation into whether building codes needed to be updated, “given serious change in climate that we are seeing across the country.” Scientists say that climate change may have changed normal weather patterns and led to these tornadoes’ increased intensity and reach, with record warm temperatures across the region potentially exacerbating the disaster.

Businesses and risk professionals should prepare now for more frequent and intense weather events. The following recent Risk Management articles may help:

RIMS ERM Conference 2021: Integrating Net Zero Commitments into ERM Plans

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In a session titled “Integrating Net Zero Commitments into ERM Plans” at the RIMS ERM Conference 2021, Michelle Tuveson, executive director of the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies, led an interactive session focused on how risk managers were handling their companies’ emission reduction pledges and efforts. Tuveson told the audience that while one-third of companies in G20 countries had signed onto “net zero” commitments—promises to eventually eliminate their companies’ carbon emissions completely—it is unclear how much analysis went into these pledges. As countries around the world start to require emission reporting, this lack of analysis (plus a lack of data to assess progress) is a major concern for these companies’ risk managers.

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The audience seemed to back up this assertion.

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Tuveson conducted a live poll, which revealed that most attendees felt that their industries were on the less prepared side for net zero developments and that their ERM and net zero plans were not very integrated. When asked which group was most driving their companies’ climate action, most answered that it was investors/rating agencies (31%), followed by the board and executive management (20%), consumers (17%), and peer companies (11%).

Tuveson was joined by Joerg Osterloh, director of enterprise risk management at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, who outlined the company’s net zero activities.

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With a commitment to be net zero by 2040, it had already reduced emissions across the company by 30% by 2019. The company was prioritizing this effort partially because it saw climate change risks “front and center,” impacting all aspects of its supply chain.

Osterloh credited a strategy that included analyzing how much emissions each sector of the company’s business produced, then strategically addressing each. For Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, the most emissions came from drink packaging, which was not as easy to reduce as other categories like operations and supply cooling. Overall, Osterloh noted the importance of being fully transparent in the company’s net zero activities and its advocacy to influence public policy on transitioning to a low carbon future. He also stressed investing now in new technologies, rather than waiting for those technologies to mature.

At least some risk managers and their companies may already be following this advice. In a final poll, most audience members said that the focus of their companies’ net zero strategy was substituting renewable power (26%), followed by greening supply chains (19%), adopting new technologies (18%), altering products and services (15%), and purchasing carbon offsets (9%).

If you missed this session, it and many of the other sessions at RIMS ERM Conference 2021 can be viewed on-demand online.