The search resumed early Monday morning to find a man and a woman missing after being swept away in a road collapse in Rivière-Éternité, Saguenay.
Two helicopters, nautical teams, several walkers joined by some twenty members of the Quebec Association of Search and Rescue Volunteers criss-cross the area.
Divers from the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) are also on site, but first to carry out seabed surveys.
“The research is progressing, but it’s not easy,” said Sergeant Hugues Beaulieu, of the SQ, in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“The river is three times its natural flow. There is a lot of debris that was left behind by the landslides. It complicates the job. »
Three people had been swept away by the collapse of Notre-Dame Street, which leads to Fjord-du-Saguenay National Park, but one of them, a forty-year-old, was rescued and is still in hospital. .
Evacuations
The SQ had to evacuate by helicopter, on Sunday, 94 people who were at the campsite of the Society of Outdoor Establishments of Quebec (SEPAQ), in the Parc du Fjord-du-Saguenay, isolated by the subsidence from Notre Dame Street.
Route 170, which crosses the municipality, has been badly damaged and requires urgent work from the Ministry of Transport.
Some 400 residents of Rivière-Éternité were also evacuated to be received by the neighboring municipalities of L’Anse-Saint-Jean and Saint-Félix-d’Otis, which quickly set up service centers for disaster victims.
Some citizens have chosen to stay at home, but must be wary of the quality of the water, which they are asked to boil.
According to Environment Canada, Rivière-Éternité received 130 mm of rain in two hours on Saturday. SEPAQ has announced that the Baie-Éternité sector of Parc national du Fjord-du-Saguenay is closed until further notice and that customers holding a reservation in the coming days will be contacted to postpone their stay or obtain a refund. .