Figures explode

Extreme weather damage in Vienna is already costing huge sums of money

Vienna's fire department is experiencing climate change first hand and is equipping itself for changing deployment scenarios.

(Bild: Feuerwehr Wien)

Part 4 of our climate series on the Vienna elections: those on the front line know best just how much climate change has arrived in the city: Vienna's Floriani firefighters, whose deployment figures are exploding - and insurance companies, who are expected to pay afterwards.

Vienna's professional fire department has seen a "rapid increase" in the number of call-outs in the last four years - and attributes this to the growing population and extreme weather events. However, a comparison of the figures for the last 15 years (see graph below) shows that the number of call-outs is rising far faster than the population - even though former sources of danger such as open fires are constantly disappearing.

Shock often follows damage when looking at the policy
Even more important than the frequency of extreme weather events is their severity. This is increasing even more, as data from Wiener Städtische Versicherung shows in a comparison of figures. According to Wiener Städtische Managing Board Director Doris Wendler, motor own damage, household and commercial insurance policies are particularly affected. For many, however, the loss event also means a rude awakening: Three quarters of all customers would only have basic cover of a maximum of 20,000 euros for household insurance.

The advancing climate change can be seen in the more frequent occurrence of natural disasters in claims payments.

Doris Wendler, Vorstandsdirektorin Wiener Städtische

Bild: Ludwig Schedl/Wiener Städtische Versicherung

Wendler recommends an annual check to see whether the sum insured still corresponds to the circumstances of life. While hail and storms are usually covered by the insurance portfolio, payments after floods and inundations are also capped by all insurance companies. Nevertheless, Wendler emphasizes that, especially in view of the increasing number of extreme weather events, insurance companies are increasingly fulfilling "an important economic function" in the event of natural disasters.

City upgrades in every nook and cranny
However, Vienna is still an island of the blessed by comparison - just think of the floods in the fall. This is less due to luck than to precautionary measures, especially away from major projects such as the Wiental Canal, which is intended to protect against flooding in Vienna's urban area. The fire department now uses its own device for chainsaw training, for example, which simulates tensions from fallen trees.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/stock.adobe.com)

Above all, however, the fire department is increasingly focusing on flexibility when making purchases, such as swap bodies for trucks and equipment modules for emergency vehicles that can be changed quickly. In general, the local emergency organizations consider themselves well equipped for future emergency scenarios. However, the "resilience of the population", as stated in their joint position paper for political decision-makers throughout Austria, has some catching up to do: "Individual precautionary recommendations" are also needed here.

"Curves like at the worst time of the pandemic"
A few tenths of a degree Celsius more could only mean a few tenths of a percent more storms, right? "That is precisely the fatal error," says Marc Olefs, Head of Climate Impact Research at the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG). In a "linear world" this would be true, but the laws of nature rarely adhere to linear laws. Accordingly, climate change on diagrams is already good for curves "that look like the worst times of the pandemic." For every degree Celsius increase in temperature, for example, the atmosphere absorbs seven percent more water vapor.

Wildfires caused by summer drought are also affecting the German capital to an increasing extent.

(Bild: Feuerwehr Wien)

And it's not just about the increase in water vapor, but its behavior: The air parcels rise higher as a result, become warmer and store more energy. All of this leads to ever more intense precipitation, with exponential effects. Every time the size of a hailstone doubles, the physical damage increases 16-fold, the scientist calculates. ZAMG data also clearly shows that heavy rain events are becoming a third more frequent.

And it doesn't stop at the physics of precipitation: The curve of deaths due to heat is "also exponential", warns the scientist. He considers heat to be "the deadliest future danger - worldwide, but also for Austria." The fact that "we as humans are not built to grasp the mutual build-up of physical factors" reinforces the researcher's certainty: "The climate crisis cannot be solved with common sense, but only with expertise."