Coping with Wild Weather: How are farmers, governments and insurers responding?

Friday, December 5, 2014

Ontario's once-reliable weather is changing and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. Here, Better Farming looks at what farmers can do to prepare themselves and what government and industry partners are doing to help

by MARY BAXTER

Rick Bross was in his workshop on the family farm near Mildmay, readying the camping trailer for a weekend trip late in the afternoon on Tuesday, May 13. One hundred feet away stood the huge old conventional bank barn where he and his wife, Deb, used to keep cattle. Just the year before, they had considered reintroducing beef production to their now mostly cash crop farm business and had added a new roof to the barn. But then stocker prices jumped and so they decided to hold off a while longer.

Suddenly, at 5:20 p.m., it became extremely dark. Rick strode outside to see what was going on.

"There was a big black cloud and I watched it coming across the farm." The air was completely still. "I probably watched it for 30 seconds until I actually heard it. I heard a roar up above me and some great big rain drops started hitting me.

"I ran back into my shed and I just went in one end and out the other. I knew I couldn't stay there because that building was rattling that bad by this time."

As he dashed to the house for shelter, a portion of the barn roof rose six to eight feet into the air before the adjacent grain bin snagged it. He ran through the house's attached garage and shut the door behind him. The door rattled, something it had never done before, and he turned back to check it was closed.

Fifty years ago, when 59-year-old Bross was just a kid, a tornado had struck nearby and he could remember his father helping neighbours fix a barn, so the idea of a tornado was within the realm of possibility. But all he'd seen was a storm cloud; there was no tell-tale funnel or the blue-green colour in the sky often associated with tornado weather. By the time he realized he should seek shelter in the basement, the wind had ceased.

He stepped outside to take stock. "Seeing where some of the pieces were laying, I knew it was not just an ordinary wind." Half the roof was gone on the west side of the building and 90 per cent was gone on the east side – not just the steel roofing but the rafters and the purlins. Part of the roof had landed against the far side of a tree trunk beside the farm's laneway. More had blown across the road and onto the neighbours' property. The barn's centre had shifted, making the entire building unsafe and unusable. Though damage to the grain bin was minor, there was a hole in the garage right up to the attic and damage to the roofing. Three trees were down in the lane. Power was out.

Deb, who worked in town, had noticed the storm. But even though the winds seemed high, "I didn't think it was that bad," she says.  

Then she received a call from Rick. "I could tell something was wrong in his voice right away," she says. By 5:30 she had returned home, but hesitated at the entrance to the lane, nervous of the downed power lines. As soon as she saw the barn roof had gone, "my mouth dropped open," she says. Rick is lucky to be here, she thought.

The next day Environment Canada researchers would conclude that what Bross had experienced was a tornado reaching F1 on the Fujita scale, the method used to measure the severity of the tornado (F0 being the lowest and F5 being the highest). An F1 tornado can have winds of up to 150 kilometres an hour.

Tornado-prone area
Environment Canada research suggests southern Ontario, and in particular the land area surrounded by the Great Lakes, is one of two of the most tornado prone areas in Canada. The other area is southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Despite its tendency for tornadoes, Ontario's weather has historically been regarded as the most reliable in the country. Want hot and dry for summer? Freezing cold in winter? Wet in fall and spring? Look no further than here.  

But as global warming proceeds, models suggest the province will experience increased variability of weather – storms that are more severe, rainstorms that deliver heavier doses of rain, more freezing rain and greater flooding – as well as more extreme events that are out of season and out of place, says David Phillips, Environment Canada senior climatologist. "We're not inventing new weather; it's not as if we're seeing sandstorms in Sarnia or typhoons in Timmins," he says. "What is going to change is the statistics of weather. Rare events will become more frequent and things that you count on won't happen as often." For more on this see our weather column by Phil (the Forecaster) Chadwick on page 46.

As of October, Ontario had already experienced 19 confirmed tornadoes this year. In 2010, Natural Resources Canada estimated the southwestern Ontario region's annual average to be between 7.5 and 10 and lower for the rest of the province; Environment Canada research estimates the 30-year annual average from 1980 to 2009 for the entire province is closer to 12.5.

Tornadoes are not the only weather events occurring more often. Over the past two years, we've witnessed severe floods in many areas of the province and, over a span of 12 months in 2013 and early 2014, there have been at least two major ice storms that wiped out power and closed down roads in southwestern Ontario.

Property loss, personal injury, business interruption and having to juggle repairs or extra duties while conducting day-to-day operations are common effects. Insurance data has shown local storms are responsible for 65 per cent of wind-related damage in North America's interior and, in Canada, the insurance industry paid out $3.2 billion in claims in 2013 to customers who had experienced large-scale catastrophes and weather events.

It was "a record year," says Pete Karageorgos, Insurance Bureau of Canada director, consumer and industry relations for Ontario. In each of the preceding four years, the industry paid out $1 billion. "It's an issue that has affected most Canadians and I would expect farmers to be no different."

How insurers respond to the growing risk varies from company to company. The responses are unlikely to be too dramatic because of the highly competitive insurance marketplace, Karageorgos says.

What can be done to mitigate the impact of wild weather is a question governments, university researchers, the insurance and construction industries have been addressing steadily in recent years. Progress has been made in some areas, yet gaps remain in others.  

For farm operations, crop or livestock losses are clearly a primary concern. Government helps address the impact through initiatives like the business risk program AgriStability and commodity production insurance, both of which target individual farm operations, or AgriRecovery disaster assistance that deals with larger segments of the industry or farms sharing a geographic area.

Legislative response
Spurred by incidents like the massive ice storm in January 1998, the blackout of northeastern North America in August 2003 and severe floods in Western Canada (floods are the most frequently occurring natural hazard in Canada), provincial and federal governments have responded with legislation and programs that target the general population.

In 2007, for example, the federal government revamped its Emergency Management Act and, in 2011, developed in conjunction with the provinces and territories a national emergency framework. In that same year, it rolled out online tools such as the Canadian Disaster Database and the "Get Prepared" website that offers advice on how to make a 72-hour emergency kit and tips on how to stay safe in a variety of situations. Emergency Management Ontario also maintains a website offering advice on disaster preparedness and management, and in 2008 the province introduced an emergency public alerting system.

For the farm community, however, one area that remains under-addressed is the country's National Farm Building Code, which presents the minimum construction standards needed to ensure the protection of human life. It does not include animal safety in its objectives.

The code becomes law only once adopted by a province, territory or other authority having jurisdiction, notes Krystyna Dodds, a National Research Council spokesperson, in an email. "It is up to each jurisdiction to decide on the use of the model codes in their building regulations and on the need to adapt or modify them to suit their specific regulatory needs." In Ontario, it's used to help regulate farm-building construction in conjunction with the Ontario Building Code.

The code was last updated nearly 20 years ago in 1995 and in 2012, concerned about the growing number of barn fires, the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes made its update a priority. The Council has indicated on its website that the 2015 update of the National Building and National Fire Codes will incorporate updates in connection with large farm buildings. Dodds, however, says a published update of the National Farm Building Code will not be released next year. The code's website notes that further consultation is needed for small farm buildings and how they should be handled in the national codes.

Steven Adema, director of engineering for Tacoma Engineers Inc. in Guelph, says the farm code is important because it recognizes unique aspects of agricultural buildings not found in other types of construction, such as their low human occupancy rate. "In the event of a major storm, the likelihood of a person being in those buildings is much lower," he explains. That allows a lower safety factor in the design "which saves the farmer thousands of dollars in construction costs."

Not having an updated code creates some confusion, he says, because the Ontario Building Code will direct users to the national code's terms, but those in turn reference design building loads and standards that are nearly two decades old. He anticipates the national code will be updated in 2020 and will require designing farm buildings to a higher level. "As long as it doesn't get too extreme, I can't see it being problematic."

Engineering for safety
Meanwhile, insurance and construction industries have been working with researchers such as those involved in Western University's wind engineering program to make buildings safer during extreme weather events.

The university's hexagonal WindEEE (Wind Engineering Energy and Environment) facility is the first of its kind in the world and uses more than 100 individually controlled fans to replicate everything from hurricanes and tornadoes to downbursts and microbursts. Airflows and the overall loading they generate on a building, as well as structures such as wind turbines and solar panels, are a focus for the facility, says Maryam Refan, a research scientist who coordinates WindEEE's activities. "What we're hoping for, and what we think we can achieve, is going to be very applicable in the industry for building residential houses or commercial buildings."

Obtaining results within the next couple of years is the goal, she says. "The outcome of our research will hopefully be included in design guides or retrofit guides which can be used by the construction industry and can be applied to any kind of building you can imagine" including farm buildings.

At the university's Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes, full-scale houses and light frame buildings can be tested to see how they and the materials used to build them respond to wind, snow and rain loads. The facility replicates the pressures such weather events place on buildings, using a system of fans. In 2015, they plan to examine the performance of commercial metal roofs, such as those that might be used on Quonset-type outbuildings on farms.

Gregory Kopp, a professor who co-ordinates the lab's research, is often involved in conducting tornado damage surveys and says he's visited farms after they've been hit. What is commonly seen is that the cladding or other components of the building's external "skin" or envelope tend to fail. "Once the cladding fails, the main structure doesn't have anything that loads it up, so you don't really see big structural failures for metal buildings. It's all about how the cladding is fastened to the structure."

Kopp suggests several ways to minimize damage, such as ensuring nails and screws are not missing and are properly fastened, paying attention to the nailing pattern to the sheathing, adding more joists or purlins underneath to have more clips to hold a metal cladding system on, adding wind-resistant doors ("overhang doors fail quite easily," he notes) and attaching engineered "hurricane" straps to the roof truss and the wall to ensure a stronger hold. He says the shift to nail guns in the construction industry has led to more nails missing their targets, which can create vulnerabilities in exterior components like cladding.

Keeping all doors and windows closed in any building during a windstorm is a straightforward precaution. "If you have a very large door open and that's the side the wind comes in, it makes the uplift force on the roof quite a bit larger," which could lead to roof failure, he explains.

Kopp also notes that they have developed guidance for securing roof-mounted solar units which should appear in the 2015 round of national building code updates. The good news, he says, is that low-profile solar systems (like those on roofs) don't make wind loads any worse, but the units do need to be fastened down.

Retrofitting a farm building would likely be easier than retrofitting a house, but farmers need to consider the cost benefit. "The probability of any individual barn being hit by a tornado is very small," he explains. "If what's in the barn is not terribly valuable, then spending more money may not be worth it. But if you have equipment that is worth quite a lot of money, then spending a bit more on the barn could probably be a wise investment."

Perth County hit
When weather-related disaster strikes, the chances are far higher that it will be some sort of storm – and a winter storm at that – which affects a broader region and can cause power loss. That was certainly the case during two ice storms that affected Perth County in April and December 2013. And Ontario farmers are well prepared for the power loss that often follows, say many of the municipal officials who were involved in delivering aid to the community during these storms.

"Farm communities have now really got their act together in having proper generator systems for most of their operations," says Ed Smith, chief of the North Perth Fire Department. The municipality declared an emergency during the April 2013 storm because of the amount of power outages and road closures.

Steve Terpstra, whose family maintains a large mixed dairy cow and farrow-to-finish pig operation near Atwood estimates their operation was without a connection to the grid for more than 80 hours during the April storm.

Terpstra says they have always maintained generators at their barns. Power outages during storms like the April one are "bound to happen," he explains.

When the power was out in April, making sure the six generators – one for each farm site – were operating smoothly became a full-time job that had to be done on top of regular chores. "At the one farm we have, the generator won't run the entire farm," he says. "It runs the barn; it won't run the feed mixing." The solution was to pull out an old hammer mill, grind the feed at their dairy site using a tractor and then transport it back to the pig barn where it was needed.

The Terpstras check their generators monthly and the family ensures there's enough fuel on hand for a crisis. In future, however, they will have another source of power during outages, a biogas plant that had been built but was not yet in full operation during the storms last year.

Those monthly checks would earn a thumbs-up from Dan McDonald, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs civil systems engineer. Regular checks of standby generators should be a cornerstone of every farm's emergency preparedness, he says. So is knowing what to do if a generator doesn't start up as expected.

"You can't necessarily just start it up manually if there's a full load on it. It could cause a lot of damage to the generator if you did that," McDonald explains. Ensuring you have the contact information for the generator's service person and understanding the manual startup procedure are essential steps in ensuring power can be restored as quickly as possible.

David McLaughlin, risk assessment supervisor for Grenville Mutual Insurance Company, which serves the southeastern Ontario region, says that over the past couple of years Grenville has focused more on exhaust systems for equipment like standby generators and stationary engines when conducting property inspections.

"Where the exhaust goes through a combustible wall or a ceiling, there are certain clearances that need to be maintained to the combustibles and we're quite often seeing that they were installed without thought being given to that," he says. "Some equipment may be installed properly when it's initially installed and then another contractor comes along and adds their piece without thought to the clearances required."

Yet sometimes, when disaster strikes, even the best-laid plans can figuratively (and literally) fly out the window.

Just ask Kristin Ego MacPhail, who owns a nursery and greenhouse operation near Barrie with her husband Gary, when heavy snow loads destroyed several of their hoop houses last winter. All they could do was watch as the damage took place. "There was too much snow for us to even clean up at the time," she explains.

That's what Rick Bross found, too, when the tornado struck last May. "It happened so fast," he says, and lasted less than a minute, so there was literally no time to respond.

"I don't know how you prepare yourself for that." BF

Farmers and weather forecasting
As Ontario's climate grows more unpredictable, farmers will need to become their own forecasters says David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada.

Within the past several decades the science of forecasting day-to-day weather has definitely improved and it will continue to do so, he says. But as weather becomes more variable and extreme "some of the things we've seen is we get the forecast right but what seems to be changing is almost the behaviour of the weather." So while forecasts about a weather event's arrival might be accurate, "what was lacking was the intensity and the duration of the event."

The big challenge for growers is to take the amount of information that's generated – radar and wind modeling, for instance – and use it to inform decisions on their operations such as when to irrigate, spray or cultivate. "Is there software, are there strategies that are designed to be able to take that specific data and translate it into actions for farmers?" Phillips asks.

As weather becomes more variable, farmers are going to have to be prepared to do more observations. Farmers need to think in terms of establishing "almost meteorological stations" for their farming area, he says, to get a sense of the health of their crop and the thermal units that their crop is receiving. That's because weather changes are going to become increasingly localized and those conditions will have varied effects on different crop types and different soil types.

"Farmers can't rely on government or private meteorologists to interpret it," he says, noting these measurements may not be geographically localized enough. "They have to have their own observations and know how to translate those observations into information." BF

A community responds to disaster
In Canada, rural communities have the well-earned reputation of pulling together to tackle a disaster. That was certainly the case last May when a tornado struck two farms near Mildmay.

Doug Waechter, then acting fire chief of South Bruce Fire Department's Mildmay Carrick fire station in Mildmay (he's now district chief), well remembers the afternoon when the tornado set down.

Busy at work in his welding shop at the edge of town, it was the rain he noticed at first.  He pulled the doors down to keep it out. "I didn't pay too much attention to it until the doors started kind of puffing in and out," he says. The strange incident lasted only a few seconds but, shortly after, someone stopped by the shop and told him a farm was damaged about two miles from town.

He drove out to the farm, assessed the damage, assumed it was a tornado and called 911. Making sure everyone was safe was the first step. "There were two kids in the house. They were both upstairs but they were in the southeast side of the house and the roof blew off on the opposite side," he recalls. Had it taken the whole roof, "it would have been devastating."

The farmer, Murray Borth, had been in the barn which had sustained a lot of damage. (Borth declined a request to be interviewed). Using Borth's high hoe and the assistance of firefighters, the barn's beams were lifted to remove the dairy cattle.

Dave West, a volunteer firefighter and the municipality's emergency management co-ordinator, remembers he was at home watching the rain coming down almost horizontally when his pager went off.

A chaotic scene greeted his arrival at the Borth farm. Not only were there animals trapped, but people nearby had responded overwhelmingly to the emergency and were also in the barn with Waechter.

There was debris everywhere, including pieces of wood with nails in them. West did not know if those who came to help had safety gear. "Then you have people with chain saws, and people with guns arriving on the scene in case animals had to be put down. That doesn't make for a safe environment."

Moreover, it looked like more storm clouds were heading in their direction. "So we called in the Teeswater fire department," West says.

West and other firefighters tried to control the scene by steering people away on the side road; those determined to help simply drove 200 to 300 metres to a concession, parked and walked through a field to the yard.

"That's neighbours helping neighbours, I understand that. But it is a chaotic scene from the point of view of someone who is trying to maintain safety for everybody," West says.

The experience brought home many lessons, he says, noting that it was the first time he'd ever been called out to respond to the aftermath of a tornado. Nor does the fire department often field calls where the rescue of large farm animals is involved.

"We haven't had a lot of barn fires. However, we have a lot of members in our fire department who have farm experience, so they know how to handle them," he notes. BF

What to check on your farm buildings
If you suspect your farm building has sustained wind damage, here are some tips from Dan McDonald, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs civil systems engineer, on what to inspect and what to take into consideration:

• Make sure you know what to do if your generator doesn't start up as expected, and make sure you have the contact information of the service person for the generator at hand and understand the manual startup procedure.
• Examine your ventilation system and all related controls. Ensure all fans are working properly and that manure gas levels are not increasing anywhere in the barn to dangerous levels.
• Consider having someone qualified come with gas detectors, but it's very important that the gas detectors are properly calibrated. They're not something you can just leave in the barn and expect they will always be accurate and give you the protection you want.
• Check on other things for the animals' requirements, like feed, water and milking equipment.
• Identify any risks to the structure, such as doors not opening and closing like they used to or if there is something unusual in a sight line like a sagging roof. If there are any concerns, contact a qualified person such as an engineer to review the structure.

Here also are some references to help you prepare for, or respond to, a weather disaster.

• Planning for and Responding to Disasters in Canada: An Approach for Farmers and Farm Organizations, by the Canadian Farm Business Management Council and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, published in 2001.
• Reducing the Risk of Fire on Your Farm, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs publication 837, published in 2010.
• Emergency Management Ontario: www.emergencymanagementontario.ca
• Federal "Get Prepared" program: http://www.getprepared.gc.ca
• Canadian Disaster Database: http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/cndn-dsstr-dtbs/index-eng.aspx BF

The painstaking task of cleaning up

When Kristin and Gary Ego MacPhail's hoop houses were destroyed last winter by heavy snow loads, obtaining the materials to repair them became a challenge.

"So many greenhouses came down this winter that we had a hard time sourcing plastic because, even for those that didn't come down, people had to slice their plastic to save their steel structures," Ego MacPhail says. "So we were probably about two weeks delayed, just being able to get the steel, nuts and bolts and plastic to rebuild."

The couple was not able to rebuild one of their houses in time for the spring season. Kristin says they made up for the loss by finding efficiencies elsewhere and, despite the sleepless nights and the scramble in the spring, "we did manage."

Dwight Shannon, who operates a cow-calf operation and grows beans as well as hay near Prescott in Grenville County, says the damage could have been a lot worse when an F1 tornado tore through his farm on Nov. 23, 2013 – the third to have crossed the farm in the 78-year-old farmer's lifetime. Nevertheless, the cleanup has presented some unforeseen hurdles.

The tornado had ripped through the 24-by-80-foot silo beside a feedlot, destroying the silo unloader and ripping out hydro wires supplying the former freestall dairy barn where some cattle were housed.

Cleanup has been painstaking. He's had to bring in a crane to clear the debris that fell into the silo and retrieve the unloader for repair, as well as hire a silo crew to remove the cement structure's top staves (similar to concrete blocks), which were no longer safe.

As of October, he still had 15 feet of corn silage in the silo. Until the silage is gone, builders cannot assess if the structure is stable enough to add some more feet to its height.

Shannon did not have his silo insured and doesn't know how much the final tally for repairs will be. He's had one estimate of $8,000 just to replace the silo roof.

While the hydro poles that support the lines to the second barn are still standing, his hydro company wants to put in new poles. Each will cost $2,000. In the meantime, the barn remains without power. BF