After being hard hit by the spring flood, several municipalities in Lanaudière were entitled to a lull on Tuesday. However, vigilance remains in order, warn the mayors of the region, at a time when the precipitation expected again tomorrow could again disrupt the daily lives of several residents.
In Sainte-Émélie-de-l’Énergie, a municipality of just over 1,700 inhabitants, flooding is common with the arrival of spring. “But this is at an exceptional level. The elders of the village have no memory of having seen so much water”, launches its mayor, Martin Héroux, in an interview with the Duty Tuesday. In some places, roads are buried under a few tens of centimeters of water, he notes.
The floods, which damaged several roads and culverts in the municipality, forced the evacuation of “15 to 20 people” by means of lifeboats, said Mr. Héroux, while dozens of other residents managed to evacuate their home by car “before the bulk of the damage”.
On Tuesday, however, the water level of several rivers began to drop, which enabled the municipality to tackle the “solidification of several municipal roads”, continues the mayor, who reports “major damage” to fix.
However, the municipality may not be at the end of its troubles. “It will depend on the precipitation that there will be this evening and this night”, warns the mayor. Tuesday afternoon, Environment Canada warned that “sometimes heavy” showers should leave 15 to 35 mm of rain until the end of the day Wednesday, in the Lanaudière region. “This precipitation will create additional stress on already vulnerable waterways,” notes the federal agency.
“The water levels are still threatening and the rain expected by Wednesday as well as the snowmelt which is not yet over could still cause our waterways to swell”, warned the mayoress of Chertsey on Tuesday, Michelle Joly, in a filmed statement published on the Youtube channel of the municipality of approximately 5,000 inhabitants.
There too, the water level decreased in several places on Tuesday, which allowed the municipality to begin work to replace the culverts that were damaged by this spring flood. “However, we must remain vigilant,” added the mayor, who invited citizens ready to lend a hand to the municipality “to come and fill sandbags” which will be distributed to citizens who need them to protect their homes. of the flood waters.
249 isolated residences
Since Tuesday morning, the number of municipalities affected by flooding in Lanaudière “has slightly decreased” from 19 to 12, indicates the minister responsible for the region, Caroline Proulx, in an interview with the Duty at the start of the evening.
“We are told that tomorrow morning [mercredi], we would have reached the peak of the precipitation and the sips of the rivers”, underlines the Minister. So far, the rising waters in the region have had the effect of flooding 40 roads, in addition to isolating 249 residences, indicates Ms.me Proulx, who met with the civil security authorities of Lanaudière in the middle of the afternoon on Tuesday to take stock of the situation. The Minister also visited some of the municipalities affected by this spring flood to see firsthand the damage caused by it.
Route 131 is still closed in Saint-Jean-de-Matha, while in the Atikamekw community of Manawan, problems with the supply of drinking water, gasoline and medication are beginning to be felt, pointed out the Minister Proulx. An “airlift” is thus envisaged by Quebec “to support the Attikamekw of Manawan in terms of supplies”, she specifies.
Caution in Rigaud
Meanwhile, in Rigaud, Montérégie, local authorities were on the alert Tuesday due to rising water levels in the Ottawa River. “The river has been rising for the past 24 hours, a fairly significant rise” of about 25 centimeters, notes the director of the Rigaud Fire Department, Sylvain Brazeau. “And we expect that to continue over the next 24 hours,” he adds.
So far, the spring freshet has inundated five kilometers of the road network in the municipality, but the municipality has not received any evacuation requests from residents. “There are people who left voluntarily at the hotel, but there are very few of them,” says Mr. Brazeau, who specifies that no resident has yet gone to the accommodation center set up in anticipation of this spring flood.
The municipality thus remains in “surveillance” mode for the moment, and is crossing its fingers so that the rising waters do not have the same impacts this year as in 2017 and 2019.