News Wildfire Week
Wawanesa Insurance awards 12 wildfire prevention grants

April 9, 2024, Winnipeg — The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company announced the 12 recipients of their second annual Community Wildfire Prevention Grants, which were developed in partnership with FireSmart Canada and the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR). Wawanesa will award $150,000 to communities this year.

This year’s grant recipients are from communities across Canada, including Indigenous communities, rural municipalities, towns, residents’ associations, and local fire departments. The grants will go toward a range of wildfire prevention activities, such as creating wildfire buffer zones around homes, home assessments with sprinkler kit incentives, public education, community wildfire protection plans, and more. For a complete list of recipient communities and their projects, please visit the Wildfire Prevention website here.

“Initiatives like the Wawanesa Community Wildfire Grants are important mechanisms to support the public education of FireSmart programs,” said Chuck Pedersen, fire chief for the Township of Douro-Dummer, Ont., in a news release. “We are very grateful that our project was selected, and we’re confident that it will create discussion and action in our community to reduce wildfires and mitigate potential property loss from wildfire.”

The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction was asked again to work with Wawanesa on this important initiative.

“2023 saw communities across the country impacted by a record number of large fires, wildfire smoke, and close to $1 billion in wildfire insurance claims were recorded. Wawanesa’s Community Wildfire Prevention Grants Program reinforces the key message that more wildfires don’t have to translate into more loss of communities. We applaud Wawanesa for their leadership in this area,” said Paul Kovacs, executive director for ICLR, in a news release.