During the first evacuation of Lebel-sur-Quévillon in June 2003, mayor Guy Lafrenière spent several nights hiding in another municipality, in order to prevent its citizens from needlessly panicking at the idea that the city, threatened by the fire is completely empty. A look back at historic forest fires with two elected officials from the affected towns.
On June 5, three days after the evacuation of the municipality, only around ten residents remained in Lebel-sur-Quévillon: the mayor, two city employees and volunteer firefighters.
By evening, the fire had become so threatening that Mayor Guy Lafrenière ordered those who were still there with him to discreetly find a place to sleep in another town, about a hundred kilometers to the south.
“It’s too dangerous, you have to go and hide in Senneterre, because the citizens must not see you,” the mayor explained to them.
Guy Lafrenière also hid in Senneterre that evening, as well as on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening.
“Citizens should not know that the city was completely empty […]we did that to spare them worry and panic,” the mayor told The Canadian Press.
He revealed that the mayor of Senneterre, Nathalie-Ann Pelchat, was waiting for him that evening.
“She was waiting for me at her office, I came in late at night, through a back door, and she had prepared supper for me. »
The mayor of Lebel-sur-Quévillon explained that Mayor Pelchat had provided him with work space, with walls painted the same color as his office at Lebel-sur-Quévillon town hall.
“I needed an office that looked like mine so that no one would realize that I was doing my interviews from Senneterre,” confided the mayor who spoke daily to the media at the time.
During the days following June 5, every morning, the mayor took the road north to spend the day in Lebel-sur-Quévillon in order to observe the progress of the fire and inquire about the extent of the damage.
When daylight fell, he returned to the town hall of Senneterre.
“I was waiting until nightfall to cross the street and go to sleep at the hotel. »
“I hope you’ll be there tomorrow.”
By recounting these events to The Canadian Press, Guy Lafrenière returned to the moment when the Society for the Protection of Forests Against Fire (SOPFEU) advised him to leave his town, and the long hours of anguish that followed.
“We left, everyone at eight o’clock in the evening and I arrived at the town’s golf club. This is the highest place to see the city at the exit. I got out of my truck and looked out over the city. There, I said: “I hope you will be there tomorrow morning, otherwise I will no longer be mayor, I will no longer have a house, nor will my children. Neither do my grandchildren, nor my friends.” »
The residents of Lebel-sur-Quévillon were able to return to their homes two weeks after this evacuation, but the relief was short-lived, as they were again ordered to leave the locality in the last week of June.
A disrupted way of life
The fires have left traces in the landscape, the economy, but also on the health of citizens, in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, Chibougamau and in several other communities affected by these historic fires.
“People were stressed for a long time, life returned a little to normal in mid-September,” explained Guy Lafrenière, emphasizing that it took several episodes of rain for the population to really feel safe.
“But there are some who were so afraid that they will never come back,” lamented the mayor, speaking of families who simply left the region.
He estimates that the forest fires have decimated hundreds of infrastructures, especially fishing cabins and hunting camps.
The way of life of many Quévillon residents has been completely disrupted.
“On Friday, people went into the woods for the weekend, but there, almost everything went to the fire, the shelters, the resort… It’s a radical change of life. »
Both in Lebel-sur-Quévillon and in Chibougamau, a town which was also evacuated in disaster last June, citizens are waiting with apprehension for the next fishing season.
“We will be able to measure the tourism benefits of fishing next summer,” explained the mayor of Chibougamau in an interview with The Canadian Press.
But what worries Mayor Manon Cyr the most is the impact that the fires will have on the forestry industry, at the heart of the region’s economic activity.
The area burned in 2023, 99.9% caused by lightning according to SOPFEU, is higher than the sum of the last 20 years, all causes combined.
“It’s a tragedy” and “it’s a forest capital that has gone up in smoke and that we won’t find again for a long time.”
A drop in timber harvest
The forest fires forced the Chief Forester of Quebec to recommend a reduction in the timber harvest for the period 2023-2028.
This drop in forest capacity is estimated at more than 619,400 cubic meters.
According to industry estimates, “this is the equivalent of the quantity of wood needed to manufacture 13,000 houses per year,” explained the mayor of Chibougamau.
To reduce the impact of this forest reduction, she expects the government to put in place a strategy.
“Our requests to the Quebec government will certainly include an increase in budgets for silvicultural and forest regeneration work,” said Manon Cyr.
A forest that must adapt to the climate
The forest fires of 2023 have decimated 4.5 million hectares of forest and extensive work is needed to make forests more resilient to climate change.
In the past, it was mainly the forestry industry that dictated the type of tree that was planted in northern Quebec, and favored species like white spruce or black spruce, which are used in production. of construction timber.
But these trees are not very resilient to forest fires and climatic disturbances.
“We have to change the way we work,” explained Mayor Guy Lafrenière, emphasizing what several biologists have repeated in recent months.
“We need to plant more hardwoods, because hardwoods almost don’t burn. »
He explained that the challenge is to find the right balance between planting conifers used by industry and hardwoods which will allow the forest to be more resilient to forest fires and other climatic hazards.
“Deciduous trees can act as a firebreak, so we can replant softwoods, but we also have to plant strips of hardwoods around them,” indicated Guy Lafrenière, adding that “all the companies we speak with are now aware that strips of deciduous trees must be left.”
Diversifying forests, planting tree species in the North that previously only grew in the South, defining adaptation strategies specific to each region and reviewing current forestry practices are among the recommendations made last fall by chief forester Louis Pelletier to the Legault government.
“We believe that our forest management, as carried out for several years in Quebec, must evolve. We believe that the status quo of our practices cannot be considered in the face of the challenges posed by the adaptation of the forest environment to new climatic conditions,” underlined chief forester Louis Pelletier in his report.
“Climate change has arrived here, there are a lot more people talking about it now in the community,” noted Guy Lafrenière.
“Of course we don’t expect another big fire before a long time because all the trees have burned”, but “what can climate change bring in 2024? », asked the mayor, emphasizing the importance of having prevention plans.
“We, regionally, are preparing to take stock because each community or each city is responsible for its emergency measures,” for her part underlined the mayor of Chibougamau.
“But you know,” added Mayor Cyr, “when you evacuate a town like Chibougamau, it has an impact on Chapais or even on Mistissini, so we have to look at how we can better equip ourselves and organize ourselves at regional level”.
Greater collaboration is therefore necessary, according to the mayor, who welcomes the government’s decision, announced at the beginning of December, to create a regional directorate of civil security and fire safety specifically for Nord-du-Québec, in order to improve community preparedness and resilience to extreme weather events.
“We are in a territory in which there is not much population, but it is a huge territory with very specific challenges”, so “it is excellent news to have regional management, it will help communities to be more agile, quicker to put emergency measures in place” and “develop a closer relationship with all communities”.
Communication “is the key”
Both Guy Lafrenière and Manon Cyr are proud of the way their administrations managed the crisis in the summer of 2023.
“If I had to do it again, I would still do it with the team I have, with my gang. I was a pampered mayor,” said Manon Cyr, praising her team which had “a good emergency plan”.
Beyond emergency plans to deal with climate disasters, the two elected officials emphasize that communication is the key to getting through such an ordeal.
“I did about 300 interviews in June and I really don’t regret it, because my people, wherever they were in Quebec, they heard about the situation, they were well informed thanks to to the media, but for the media to inform us well, we must inform them,” explained Guy Lafrenière.
He added that “no citizen” called him during the crisis because “all the information was in the regional and provincial media,” which allowed his team to focus on other aspects of crisis management.
“Communication is really the main thing, it’s the door, it’s the only way out” and “every day, the citizens knew that I was doing a Facebook live at 11 a.m., always at the same time “.
This ritual on the social network allowed the mayor to take stock, remind people of the instructions and bring a little predictability in these moments of uncertainty.
The daily meeting with citizens on the social network was always at the same time and always broadcast from city hall.
“The Facebook live, I did them in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, these are the interviews with the media, in the evening, that I did in Senneterre,” the mayor insisted, adding that he later informed the citizens of this subterfuge, and that no one holds it against him.
On the contrary, he said, “even today, people stop me in the street to thank me for keeping them well informed.”