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A new report recommends the development of a national standard for Canada on wind resilience to mitigate residential and small building property damage resulting from natural disasters.
The report by the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) and the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) proposes measures for four major categories:
- roofs;
- walls and upper and lower-storey connections;
- anchoring of the building to the foundation; and
- additional construction details such as garage doors.
These measures could form a new national standard of Canada that governments could incorporate into regulation, and integrate in the National Building Code (NBC), or to which builders could adhere voluntarily, thus raising the bar for construction in the country.
High winds contributed in part to most natural catastrophes recorded by the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) between 1983 and 2016. For example, the May 2018 windstorm in southern Ontario and Québec, and the September 2018 tornadoes in the National Capital Region (NCR), caused close to $1 billion in insured losses, according to Catastrophe Indices and Quantifications Inc. (CatIQ).
“Protecting residential structures will be aided by measures that have the biggest impact on structural safety,” said Paul Kovacs, executive director of ICLR. “For example, roofs are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of high wind. Keeping roofs sound and well-connected to walls helps reduce structural failure and property damage, like that associated with intrusion of water.”
