No effort is being spared to protect Senneterre in Abitibi-Témiscamingue from threatening forest fires.
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This morning, with the help of heavy machinery, a gigantic trench was dug in the town of 1,100 citizens in order to protect businesses located only a few tens of meters from the forest.
SOPFEU employees are in the Senneterre industrial park uprooting trees, turning the earth and pushing it back towards the forest in order to create a very large strip of completely cleared land aimed at stopping the fire if it approached and reached companies, in particular Transport Allaire, which hires many employees.
“It is to protect the assets, the population, the infrastructures. We put a lot of effort. There are thousands of jobs here. We have to save our assets,” explains Éric Allaire, General Manager of Transport Allaire.
Mayor Nathalie-Ann Pelchat of Senneterre also told our journalist Yves Poirier that she was going to have trenches dug near 113 North, near residential neighborhoods to protect homes.