After Baie-Saint-Paul and Rivière-Éternité, the Quebec City and Estrie regions were in turn faced with flooding on Tuesday, forcing the preventive evacuation of more than 800 people and the deployment of a series of measures. emergency.
While the concern is slightly decreasing in Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval, near Quebec, the flooding of the Montmorency River now threatens the sectors located further downstream towards Beauport, on the territory of Quebec, where about twenty houses have been evacuated on Tuesday.
Lurking in an isolated sector of Beauport, the small rue des Trois-Saults is in a flood zone stuck on the river at the bottom of a hill. Tuesday, it was covered with a good meter and a half of water in some places.
Its residents are used to flooding. But Tuesday was the first time authorities forced them to evacuate.
Sylvie Falardeau, who has lived there for thirty-three years, had already decided to leave her house on Monday evening when the level of the river rose. “I had all my things ready. I slept in the living room to be ready in case they came,” she says. Tuesday afternoon, her house remained intact, but the lady has had less confidence in the river for several years. His basement was flooded in 2020 for the first time. “That year, I saw a chest of drawers go by in the river. »
“When you think of Saguenay, then Baie-Saint-Paul, what happens when there is too much water, I don’t want that to happen to me. This year, I am older then wiser, ”she says with a half-smile.
Unprecedented situation in summer
To the point of one day considering moving to a safer place? “We are so good here! Before yesterday, I was in the river sitting in it! It’s refreshing and with the heat we have, it’s so pleasant, “says Mme Falardeau.
The Fire Department’s water rescue team picked up Beauport residents one after another by inflatable boat Tuesday afternoon. With their suitcases, their dogs and sometimes a certain discontent.
Some grumbled, judging the operation useless and pleading that it was last night that it was worrying, that the level had dropped since. Damien Geoffroy was surprised in particular by the extent of the means deployed compared to the last flood during the flood of the 1er May that had seriously hit Baie-Saint-Paul. The last time, he had to sleep in his truck with his family whereas this time, he was offered to stay at the hotel for free.
“This time they are better organized, except that it is less important than May Day. There is less water. »
Asked about it, the spokesman for the Fire Department, Bill Noonan, said that the activity of the watershed is “scalable”. “There, it can be quieter but in a few hours, it can get worse. »
The flows in this sector exceed 800 m3/s. It was the first time on Tuesday that Civil Security intervened in this sector during the summer, said Mr. Noonan.
More than 500 evacuees in Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval
Before investing rue des Trois-Saults, the Montmorency River had first caused damage upstream in the suburbs of Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval.
“We are like an outpost of what can happen lower,” said Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval director of public security, Moïse Mayer, during a press briefing on Tuesday noon.
It is also necessary to count a dozen hours between the moment of precipitation and that the runoff is completed, he warned.
Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval has had to evacuate 520 people since Monday, mainly to an island along the river, Île Enchanteresse.
On Tuesday, authorities were unable to say when residents would be able to return home, as the bridge that connects the island to the rest of the territory is closed.
Even if the weather projections seem to have crossed a plateau, the level of alert remains, warned Mayor France Fortier.
Mme Fortier has also signed a state of emergency for 48 hours “because they are still announcing precipitation,” she said Tuesday noon.
The mayor added that the announcement of the emergency decree would facilitate her efforts to obtain financial assistance from the Government of Quebec when the time comes to pay the bill for the disaster.
The extent of the damage remains to be established since the island remains inaccessible. But according to Mr. Mayer, many houses have been flooded and the streets are in poor condition.
On the rest of the territory, he also reports accelerated erosion along the river where owners are “losing ground”.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security (MSP), Joshua Ménard-Suarez, notes for his part that in terms of severity, “we are very far” from the last spring flood. “To give a scale of magnitude, the rivers that are the most problematic have reached a threshold of minor floods that encroach on land and roads,” he notes. “Yes, in some cases, it could overflow into residences, but generally speaking, this is not the case,” he adds.
More fear than harm in Estrie
The spokesperson for the MSP explained that the storms caused damage mainly “in a corridor” which includes Estrie, Centre-du-Québec, Mauricie, Québec, Charlevoix and Chaudière-Appalaches. The significant amounts of rain that have fallen in Estrie since have caused the level of the Saint-François River to rise sharply, which notably crosses downtown Sherbrooke, prompting the City to preventively evacuate a little more than 330 people living in areas along the watercourse.
The water level of the river beginning to stabilize in the middle of the afternoon, the director of the Sherbrooke Fire Protection Service (SPCIS), Stéphane Simoneau, foresees that the evacuated residents will be able to return to their homes. tomorrow afternoon, in the worst case”. “We think that the worst is over for this episode”, which notably flooded “nearly 60 trailers” which remained parked at the Île-Marie campsite after its evacuation. However, no residence was flooded, notes Mr. Simoneau, in an interview with the Duty.
In Cookshire-Eaton, a town in the Eastern Townships of around 5,500 inhabitants, around 40 people “agreed to evacuate” their homes at the request of firefighters who came to visit them on Tuesday morning, says the town’s communications director. , Claude Leclair. By late afternoon, however, evacuated residents were “already” beginning to return to their homes, he said, due to the stabilization of water levels in the Eaton River. “We are very happy with the developments,” adds Mr. Leclair. I think we avoided the worst. »