‘We’re going to have to rebuild our life’: Family’s home burns after cancelling home insurance

As wildfires destroy homes and structures, many face mounting uninsured losses. Allison Bamford reports on the growing financial toll.

Tessa Santana faced an unthinkable dilemma last year. Does she pay for house insurance or feed her family?

“We weren’t in a good place,” Santana told CTV News.

“It’s not that I never had house insurance. Last year was tough financially on us.”

Santana, a mother and grandmother, opted to cancel her insurance, never imagining the following year her northern Saskatchewan community would be threatened by wildfires.

Their home of 20 years, where they watched their kids and grandkids grow, burned down just north of La Ronge in early June. The fire killed most of their animals, including their two dogs and a donkey.

“That’s something I’ve got to live with,” she said.

“We’re going to have to rebuild our life.”

Today, Sanatana and her husband Leonardo find themselves three hours south in Rosthern, Sask., at the Valley Regional Park Campground.

They’ve been living in their trailer with their 11-year-old dog Coco for the last six weeks.

“We love camping. It feels like an extended camping trip,” she said.

“However, then when reality does hit you and you’re like, ‘this is our home.’”

Santana still gets emotional at times. But she says they are fortunate to have the things they do. There’s a TV and reclining chairs in the trailer. They’ve converted the shower into a closet for storage, and at night they sleep in a king-sized bed.

“We are not really just camping. We are glamping,” she said. “We’re making it as homey as we can.”

But it’s hard to settle in, she said. At their current site, they have extension cords running from the trailer to an outlet at the site over for power access. They’ve had to move campsites several times due to other park bookings.

“It’s tiring, it really is. But we’re thankful we got to move within Rosthern Regional Park and we didn’t have to go and finding something else,” she said.

The Santanas don’t know where they’ll end up. The campground will be their home for the summer, but they hope to at least be renting a place by the time the snow flies.

Leonardo, who had retired from the mining industry, will return to work Monday. The couple is saving up to buy or build a new home one day.

When they do get a house, insurance will be a top priority, Santana said. And she hopes they won’t ever be put in this position again.

“But if it ever came down to it again, feeding my family or buying insurance, every time I’m going to feed my family,” Santana said.

The insurance gap

The Santanas are not alone.

Several insurance brokers told CTV News they’ve received calls from uninsured and underinsured clients who’ve lost property this wildfire season.

A rule of thumb, known as the insurance gap, suggests that for every $1 in insured losses, there are $3 to $4 in uninsured losses borne by homeowners, businesses and governments.

Last year was the costliest year on record for severe weather-related losses in Canada, reaching $8.5 billion in insured losses. Following the insurance gap rule, that puts uninsured losses between $25.5 billion to $34 billion.

“For government, that’s money coming out of budgets for hospitals, schools and infrastructure development. For businesses, that’s money coming out of budgets for business expansion, equipment upgrades and employee compensation,” said Kathryn Bakos, managing director of finance and resilience at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation.

Bakos said losses can be less if adaptations are made prior to an extreme weather event, including moving combustible materials away from the house and using fire resistant siding and roofing.

“If you put what’s called fire smart actions into place, 15 actions around the house, you could potentially reduce the chance of your home burning down by 50 to 75 per cent,” Bakos said.