Mitigating Property Damage With New Construction Standards For Wind Resilience

High winds contributed in part to most catastrophes in Canada over the past few decades, prompting the need for a new national standard on wind resilience, the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) said Thursday. A report released by ICLR and the Standards Council of Canada is recommending the development of a new national standard of Canada on wind resilience to mitigate residential and small building property damage from natural disasters. More than 210 catastrophes — events that caused insured damage of $25-million or more — swept through Canada between 1983 and 2017, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC)’s 2018 Facts of the Property and Casualty Insurance Industry of Canada. One hundred and thirty-five (about 64%) of them had some form of wind component, such as a windstorm, tornado, storm or hurricane, ICLR reports.