Province urged to adjust building codes in wake of another destructive Calgary hailstorm

Tens of thousands of homes in north Calgary were left with shredded siding and damaged roofs after last week's destructive hailstorm, leaving many wondering how to prepare before another storm inevitably strikes.

Last week in Livingston — a community hit hard by the storm — Julian Brimelow of the Northern Hail Project said there are many unknowns about how hailstorms will evolve with the changing climate.

What he does know is that the storms will keep coming.

So are Calgary's homes built to survive this kind of weather? Brimelow doesn't think so.

"Unfortunately, vinyl siding and shingles are probably the worst thing you can have in your house in the event of a severe storm like this," said Brimelow.

"If I could wave a magic wand, [for] certain communities that are prone to hail, there would be different building codes in place to make sure that you do have siding that's hail resilient and shingles that are resilient to hail."

Brimelow says an estimated 36,000 homes were affected last week, and he predicts the insured damage costs will be similar to the $1.2 billion hail storm in 2020, since the airport and at least 16 WestJet planes were hit.

Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal is advocating for changes to provincial building codes.

He says recently constituents have been asking the city to make bylaw changes to ensure their homes are protected from hailstorms. Many of their homes were damaged last week for the second time in four years.

But he says that's out of the municipal government's jurisdiction. Instead, it's the federal government that creates building codes, while the province can adjust them.

"These areas that are prone to these kinds of damages every second year, every third year — let's make sure that the builders are required to put in the material that can withstand these kinds of storms in the future," said Dhaliwal.

Mairead Walsh, a building envelope consultant with Keller Engineering, says it's incredibly important that homeowners move toward more durable exterior materials — especially in parts of the city often hit by severe hailstorms.

"There are other products on the market, like fibre cement siding or traditional stucco, that have more hail resistance than vinyl siding," said Walsh.

She says there's an environmental element to it, too. When vinyl is damaged by hail, it often ends up in the landfill.