In Saint-Urbain, the disappearance of two volunteer firefighters shakes the community. Several people, within the village of 1350 souls, knew the missing, two young men of whom Quebec remains without news since Monday afternoon.
“It’s appalling,” repeats the grandfather of one of the two missing over the phone. “For the whole family, it’s a shock: we find it hard to believe. »
The names of the two disappeared circulate in Baie-Saint-Paul, a tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone from near or far. The authorities refuse to confirm their identity as long as the search continues and their fate remains unknown. To preserve families, The duty prefers to conceal any element allowing them to be identified.
The roar of helicopters resounded all day in the gray sky of Baie-Saint-Paul, Tuesday. The two firefighters have been missing since Monday afternoon, swept away by the current while providing assistance to victims of Saint-Urbain, about thirty kilometers north of Baie-Saint-Paul. The municipality was also still cut off from the world, Tuesday in the middle of the afternoon, due to damaged or closed roads.
“It doesn’t make sense,” said the cousin of one of the missing persons joined to Saint-Urbain. Everyone is worried, the whole family is waiting for news. »
The force of the current of the Gouffre River carried away the two firefighters and their amphibious boat shortly before 2 p.m. on Monday. Since then, no trace of the two men or their ship despite the deployment of helicopters, divers, patrol boats on horseback, mountain bikes or boats to find them.
In an area stretching from Saint-Urbain to where the Rivière du Gouffre and the Saint-Laurent meet, the search resumed at dawn. “During the night, there was raking, explains Béatrice d’Orsainville, spokesperson for the Sûreté du Québec (SQ). There are divers present, we have deployed about twenty patrollers, some are on mountain bikes. A drone leads the sentry from the air, the coast guard monitors the shoreline of the river in search of a clue.
“The research continues,” assures the Minister of Public Security, François Bonnardel, who came to see on the spot the extent of the damage. “We want to find them as soon as possible. »
Every hour that passes diminishes the hope of finding the two disappeared alive. “From the moment someone falls into immersion in water at these temperatures without appropriate equipment, we can have symptoms of hypothermia from the first half hour,” explains Jean-François Bourdon, a rescuer in white water met near the Leclerc bridge Tuesday morning. “When these symptoms appear, just being mobile, just hanging on to the banks, moving around, swimming, it becomes very difficult. »
The melting snow clinging to the peaks, combined with heavy rains that have been sweeping over this hilly region for two weeks, brought the tributaries of the Gouffre River out of their beds, ravaging, on Monday, the banks that criss-cross Saint-Urbain to Baie-Saint-Paul – and carrying in its waters two young men dedicated to the service of their community, perhaps, tragically, at the risk of their lives.