Grueling insurance hurdles, looming property tax hikes, and a myriad of other financial woes are taking a toll on some Nova Scotia residents a year after wildfires devastated their homes and livelihoods.
“It’s been a lot of stress and a lot of figuring things out as we go,” Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia resident Peter Walsh told CBC News, referring to the arduous insurance process his family undertook after losing their home and possessions to wildfire in May 2023.
The Walsh home was one of 151 that burned after a fire hopscotched through Upper Tantallon, Hammonds Plains, and Pockwock—three suburbs west of downtown Halifax—ultimately causing some C$165 million in insured damages.
Dozens of emails and hours of phone calls “trying to clarify things that you don’t understand going into the process,” produced a claim of more than 100 pages—and the shocking revelation that items classed as non-essential under his policy are now “considered to have depreciated in value by as much as 90%.”
“You just have to kind of leave a lot of the emotion out of it,” Walsh said, explaining his response to discovering that his tools were among the items that had dropped in value.
With the framing of his family’s new house finally under way, Walsh is embracing the positive: “We’ve worked through a lot of the tougher times and are now moving into something that’s a little bit more promising.”
Tricia Murray-d’Eon, of nearby Hammonds Plains, is “only just getting going with her rebuild,” writes CBC. For Murray-d’Eon, the process was complicated from the start, because City Hall had no record of her home’s 1996 building plan.
She was ultimately able to submit a claim after painstakingly proving the size and substance of her lost home by cobbling together evidence from photographs.
“There was a point that I was definitely feeling burnt out,” she said.
As the rebuild finally begins, she is now worried she could face nearly a doubling of her property tax, since her new home will likely be assessed at a much higher value than the one built in 1996.
Local MLA Ben Jessome (L-Hammonds Plains-Lucasville ) has gone to bat for people like Murray-d’Eon, and is pressuring Nova Scotia to amend its Assessment Act to protect residents affected by disasters from sudden tax increases. In a stopgap measure, the province has said property owners in the direct line of wildfires will receive an additional 15% reduction in the assessed value of their homes.
To the south, in Shelburne County, the challenge of rebuilding has been compounded by the fact that “a number of the homes that were destroyed were not insured,” reports CBC. The flames also had a big impact on the local fishing industry, lobster fisherman Kevin Doane told the news outlet.
A volunteer firefighter who helped fight the wildfire, Doane estimates his fishing gear losses at around $60,000. He is still waiting to hear back about his application for support from a disaster financial assistance fund that Halifax set up in November.
“I wish they would just give us an answer either yes or no,” he said, adding he has already spent about $14,000 on new lobster traps.
