(Îles-de-la-Madeleine) “We’re going to get up. »
Posted at 10:23 a.m.
Owner of the Café de la Grave with her husband and daughter, Nathalie Bénard tries to keep her spirits up despite the damage caused by Fiona.
The popular Havre-Aubert café was flooded like several other businesses in this tourist sector. His kitchen hood was torn off, so it was impossible to reopen the kitchen. “Our season ends abruptly”, laments Mme Benard.
This Sunday morning in the Magdalen Islands, the owners of businesses and residences in the most seriously affected areas are discovering the extent of the damage while the post-tropical storm is behind them.
The sun has returned, but the mines are long in the flooded coastal sectors from La Grave to Havre-Aubert and from Pointe to Havre-aux-Maisons.
“At least it’s just material,” adds his daughter Marie-Claude Vigneault, with tears in her eyes. Here, everyone was wondering if the recent rip-rap work done at a cost of more than seven million dollars to protect the banks was going to be effective.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Marie-Claude Vigneault, one of the owners of the popular Café de la Grave, in Havre-Aubert.
The sea passed over the wall of rocks, but obviously this slowed down the violence of the waves, note the owners of the place. Nevertheless, the shock is brutal, confides Mme Vigneault. “In 2019, we ended the tourist season with the storm Dorianafter that, it was the pandemic, it’s a lot to take in a short time, ”she summarizes.
Their neighbor owner of a chocolate factory also had a very bad surprise: her terrace was washed away by water. “We would have done well without it,” says Linda Lebel, who bought her business in the midst of a pandemic and who is not insured in the event of natural disasters.
“At least the shop is still standing,” says the resilient shopkeeper. Mme Lebel made coffee for all his neighbors when passing The Press this Sunday morning. His phone is not ringing. His friends hear from him and offer to come by to help him clean up the mess. “That’s the Islands, everyone helps each other,” says the friendly chocolate maker.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Linda Lebel, owner of a chocolate factory whose terrace was washed away. “At least the shop is still standing,” she says.
At the end of Route 199 in Havre-Aubert, many heterogeneous objects littered the roadway. An old snowmobile here. A car with the trunk open there. A house was completely destroyed by the sea. At the dock, a sailboat was overturned.
The damage is everywhere.
“We were lucky. It could have been more serious, ”says Yvon Cormier, a retiree who came to see if his boat had been spared. “At the marina on Saturday, the sea was six feet higher than usual,” he said. It made a whole mess. »
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
“At the marina on Saturday, the sea was six feet higher than usual,” said a resident of Havre-Aubert.
Like most Madelinots met this Sunday morning, Mr. Cormier was relieved to see that the damage was limited to material losses. But at the same time, worried about the future of his archipelago: “the storms are getting worse and worse. At some point, there’s one that’s going to be too big to resist.” This time his boat was spared.
A couple from Havre-Aubert experienced a brutal awakening in the night from Friday to Saturday. The roof of their mobile home flew off and landed on the neighbor’s lot across the street, located on the other side of the 199. blow (explosion)”, describes Denis Cormier, still in shock. The electric pole in front of his house broke. Water seeped into their residence.
This Sunday morning, when passing The Press, his spouse Diane Couillard was climbing a ladder to see the extent of the devastation. “Mother Nature, you have no control over this,” she concludes, looking resigned.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Denis Cormier and Diane Couillard
The state of emergency is maintained for the whole day. The municipality must unveil a first assessment of the damage later today. She asks the population for a second day in a row to limit their movements.
Municipal teams have started to clean the roads, but “the return to normal may take several days”, warns its spokesperson, Marie-Christine Leblanc. Hydro-Québec is hard at work restoring power to areas that are still without electricity.
Due to power outages, municipal drinking water wells are still not operating at full capacity. Madelinots must limit their water consumption as much as possible.