City struggling to keep up with cleanup from Friday's windstorm

Cbc.ca
May 10, 2018

Yard waste is piling up and the city is facing a backlog of calls related to felled and damaged trees as it labours to complete the cleanup from Friday's windstorm.

Jane Arbour, a spokesperson with the urban forestry department, said in an emailed statement that the city has received 2,169 calls related to "tree failures" caused by the windstorm. City crews have responded to 1,779 of those calls.

"All available crews are working on this, and we're on target to complete full clean-up by May 18," said Arbour.

Arbour said the city focused first on addressing immediate safety hazards but she added crews may need to return to some sites to complete additional work.

In a tweet, the city said it is also dealing with higher volumes of yard waste and will be increasing the number of brown-bag pickups. The city is encouraging people with yard waste to leave it out on their scheduled day. If it is not picked up on schedule, a crew will pick it up as soon as possible.

Cost of storm damage on the rise

There's no word yet on the total cost of the damage caused by Friday's windstorm.

However, the Insurance Board of Canada (IBC) reported Thursday the cost of damages from other extreme weather events is increasing in Ontario. In a news release, the IBC said data from Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ) shows insurance companies have been paying out approximately $1 billion per year compared to about $400 million per year a generation ago.

"Insured losses from storms such as this one are increasing rapidly," said Kim Donaldson, vice-president for IBC Ontario.

"This past year in Ontario alone, CatIQ has tracked over $600 million in insured damage from weather-related events."

The IBC said the mid-April ice storm that affected southern Ontario resulted in more than $190 million in insurance damages, with the vast majority of claims coming from the Greater Toronto Area.