The Event
On August 5, 2024, Calgary was hammered by a catastrophic hailstorm. Between 7:45 pm and 8:30 pm with a peak intensity of just 15 minutes, the city was pelted with hailstones ranging from toonies to chicken eggs. Within days, the scale of the damage became undeniable: this was the biggest hail event in the city’s history — and it would go on to become the second-costliest insured event in Canadian history.
An estimated 20% of all homes in Calgary sustained damage. One in five. In a single evening, the city’s insurance and restoration ecosystem was buried under a volume of claims no standard operation is built to absorb.
The Challenge
Two of Calgary’s leading insurance partners, DKI Calgary (then RCCN) and Total Exteriors, went into action immediately as the claim numbers piled up. But the math was brutal. Tens of thousands of damaged roofs. A finite pool of crews. Homeowners waiting, exposed, with winter on the horizon.
Every day a roof went unscanned was a day a claim couldn’t move, a repair couldn’t start, and a family couldn’t get answers.
Surge capacity wasn’t optional. It was the difference between a managed catastrophe and a stalled one.
The Response
One week after the storm, DKI Calgary reached out to DSC for CAT surge management support. Within another week, operational systems were stood up, integrated, and live. Assignments began flowing immediately.
There was no ramp-up period measured in months. From first call to full operational flow: 14 days.
Once DSC’s network took off, the cycle-times for full roof and siding inspections dropped rapidly. At the end of 5 weeks, inspections were running at an average of 7 days from assignment to data delivery.
The Numbers
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Scans assigned by DKI Calgary | 413 |
| Scans assigned by Total Exteriors | 519 |
| Total drone assignments completed | 932 |
| Average turnaround, file assigned → scan completed | 7 days |
Nearly a thousand drone scans. Completed in an average of seven days from assignment to scan — in the middle of the worst hail catastrophe the city has ever seen, while the entire regional industry was operating at maximum strain.
Why It Matters
Catastrophe response is won or lost on throughput. When 20% of a major city’s housing stock is damaged at once, capacity is the only currency that counts and DSC delivered it at scale, on demand, without sacrificing turnaround time.
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Speed of mobilization: Operational within two weeks of first contact, mid-catastrophe.
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Scale on demand: Nearly 1,000 assignments absorbed across two partners simultaneously while maintaining the same KPI for other clients.
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Consistency under pressure: A 7-day average turnaround held across 5 weeks of assignments inside a two-month engagement.
The Takeaway
The Calgary hailstorm proved what DSC’s CAT surge model is built for: when a once-in-a-generation disaster overwhelms local capacity, DSC plugs in fast, scales instantly, and keeps claims moving. DSC absorbed two new clients mid-catastrophe: our BAU KPI is ≤5 days from assignment to flight, and through the worst hail CAT in Calgary’s history it held at 7.
When the catastrophe is historic, the response has to be too.