The authorities still do not have a deadline to give for the reopening of Route 170 and Route Notre-Dame, which were both devastated by the rains last Saturday in the municipality of Rivière-Éternité. .
“The priority remains to provide access to Route 170. We are in recovery mode,” said Denis Demers, geotechnical engineer at the Quebec Ministry of Transport during a press briefing on the state of the situation.
The teams are hard at work restoring the roads of the county municipality of Fjord-du-Saguenay, which has been preventing local traffic since the torrential rains on Saturday.
The major works consist of creating a bypass road for emergency vehicles. “We plan to make it passable by the end of the day,” said Mario Goudreau of the Department of Transport. He specifies that this work will take several more days.
Efforts are being made to install a temporary culvert on Route 170 to divert the water. Mr. Goudreau specifies that the operation will take several days. “A 12-metre culvert is a project that usually takes months. We are currently trying to do it in a few days,” he adds, adding that the operation is a major challenge.
As for the Notre-Dame road, where two people are still missing after being swept away by landslides, temporary work is underway to reopen the road.
“We will have to remove the debris and then build concrete block walls since there are still portions around the scars caused by the landslides that are still unstable,” explains Denis Demers. Being located in a steep region, it is not impossible that some debris will descend on the road in the next few days.
“The blocks will provide a lane of traffic so people can return to campsites to collect their belongings and belongings. »
Rapid accumulation
According to the latest data, 130 mm of water fell on the municipality in less than two hours on Saturday afternoon. The majority of this storm spilled over Highway 170, which explains why the damage is concentrated along the highway.
“The rain fell so quickly that the water accumulated on the ground,” says Denis Demers. There was also a swelling of the rivers which turned into torrents before overflowing. It was so strong that the water accumulated in places where there were no water troughs, which devastated certain terrains,” explains the engineer.
Most of the private lands affected were victims of the phenomenon of aggradation, that is to say an accumulation of sediments and debris wrecked by the waters on a land.
Research continues
The search is continuing to find the two people swept away by the landslide on Notre-Dame Street.
The identity of one of the two people swept away by the landslide of the Notre-Dame road is now known.
This is Pascale Racine, a native of the Quebec region who was passing through the region. At the time of the events, she had got out of her vehicle to clear debris from the road before it broke. According to the latest information, her spouse Jean-Philippe Caty, is still in the hospital to treat his injuries which would have occurred while he was trying to save his wife.
No information on the other man swept away by the landslide has been released. Like Pascale Racine, the man is not native to the region, according to the authorities.