The municipalities of Baie-Saint-Paul and Saint-Côme resorted to their emergency measures on Monday due to ongoing flooding which forced the evacuation of dozens of residences in addition to damaging several road infrastructures. At least two people are missing.
At 12:05 p.m., the municipality of Baie-Saint-Paul activated its emergency measures. Since then, Route 138, as well as several roads and ranges in the municipality of some 7,300 inhabitants, have been closed to road traffic due to the heavy rains of the last few hours, which caused the Gouffre and Mares rivers to overflow. Bridges were also damaged, while trailers that were at the Le Genevrier campsite were washed away by the Rivière des Mares, which also flooded several chalets that were on this site.
“It’s catastrophic, everything is completely devastated”, indicated the owner, Paul Labbé, to the Duty. Throughout the day, he watched the ballet of caravans from his campsite carried away by the force of the current and crashing against the bridge downstream. “Everything was going well, we had reservations, we were getting ready to welcome campers for the season,” he explained. Then in one afternoon, I saw 50 years of my life gone. »
“The current was so strong that it tore trunks, branches. It went up to here, “told the Duty Jean-Sebastien Proulx. He and his parents had to be evacuated from their residence in downtown Baie-Saint-Paul on Monday due to rapidly rising water levels in their area. “The water rose at breakneck speed,” adds Mr. Proulx, who found refuge with relatives spared by the floods.
Two helicopters belonging to the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) and the Canadian Armed Forces were also deployed on Monday after two firefighters were swept away by the current. They were trying to help residents affected by the rising waters in the Saint-Urbain sector, in Charlevoix. An investigation is underway to try to find them, the SQ said on Monday.
In a press briefing at the end of the afternoon on Monday, the mayor of Baie-Saint-Paul, Michaël Pilote, for his part reported “two missing persons”, without wanting to confirm that they are firefighters. in question. “What I can say is that these are not people from Baie-Saint-Paul,” he said.
“Isolated” residents
The elected official, however, indicated that between 60 and 80 people were on Monday afternoon in the Luc-et-Marie-Claude arena after being evacuated from their homes. Children from two downtown daycare centers were brought to this arena, where their parents were able to pick them up.
“Several residences are at risk of collapse, of being washed away by the flood waters,” said the mayor, while around 1,000 people were “isolated” on Monday due to the closure of road links in the municipality. “In the next few hours, we will be able to help other people” who need to be evacuated, assured Michaël Pilote.
A boil water advisory was also issued in Baie-Saint-Paul due to a break in the water supply system. “We will focus on repairing this leak in the next few hours and we hope to have an aqueduct network that will work better than at present,” said Mr. Pilote. This notice, which concerns the entire municipality, should however apply at least for the next two days.
The Minister of Public Security, François Bonnardel, will travel to Baie-Saint-Paul on Tuesday morning in the company of CAQ MPs Jonatan Julien and Kariane Bourassa to learn about the devastation caused by the spring flood, which also forced the evacuation of several residents in the Quebec region on Monday.
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#floods To @baiesaintpaul : We are in contact with the municipalities affected and we are monitoring the situation very closely. The @sureteqc deploys its staff to support the community. I will be there tomorrow with my colleagues @karianebCAQ & @JJulienCAQ
— Francois Bonnardel (@fbonnardelCAQ) May 1, 2023
Lanaudière receives
In the municipality of Saint-Côme, in Lanaudière, a dozen roads were closed to traffic on Monday and several residences were evacuated due to the rising waters in this sector. A reception center has also been opened to provide a place to stay for people affected by these floods.
Residents who live at Domaine du Lac France, near the King Lake dam, have been evacuated, since it threatens to yield, said the mayor of Saint-Côme, Martin Bordeleau, in an interview with the Duty. “We have maybe fifty residences that are in areas at risk” due to the rapid rise in the water level in the L’Assomption River, he said.
“The damage is very significant,” added the mayor, who reported many roads and “culverts” that were damaged by these spring floods. The municipality has also launched a call for available volunteers to fill sandbags to protect residences threatened by these floods.
“We have never seen that,” for his part launched a resident of Saint-Côme, Bernard Paquin. “We no longer have a street, the rest of us,” he says, while specifying that his home, located on the edge of a lake in the municipality, was spared by the rising waters. “But we have three neighbors near us who are completely flooded. »
The municipalities of Chertsey and Sainte-Émélie-de-l’Énergie also declared a state of emergency on Monday due to rising waters, which isolated many residences on their territory.
With Sebastien Tanguay