“It’s something that you don’t forget, but that you have to put aside. » A decade has passed since the disastrous fire which claimed 32 lives in the Résidence du Havre, in L’Isle-Verte, shaking the whole of Quebec. As this disastrous anniversary approaches, the former fire chief of the small municipality of Bas-Saint-Laurent Yvan Charron, who has now left office, is trying as best he can to turn the page.
Ten years ago Tuesday, Mr. Charron was sleeping peacefully in his bed, until a late call woke him from his peace. As on so many other nights, the volunteer firefighter with thirty years of experience gets up and goes eight kilometers from his home, at 25, rue du Quai, where the report was made. On the spot, he found himself in front of a real “ball of fire”.
“You don’t expect anything big like this, ever,” says Mr. Charron in an interview with Duty. It’s unimaginable. » Without waiting, the firefighter rushes into this “monstrous” blaze and fails to put on respiratory protection. A gesture later severely condemned by the coroner Cyrille Delagé in the report of the commission of inquiry which followed the event.
Looking back, Mr. Charron says he preferred to leave these devices to colleagues with less experience. “A less experienced firefighter who would have entered without equipment, perhaps he could have lost his life,” he argues. The former fire chief was also criticized for entering the seniors’ residence when that was not his role.
Yvan Charron is, however, categorical: if he faced the same situation tomorrow, he would do the same thing. “When you see people screaming on the balconies, you see dead people, you can’t stay still. In any case, I am not capable. » He adds that he would have been blamed for watching people die if he had not acted.
“I came back, I saved people,” he says.
Looking ahead
After 18 years as chief, the trained farmer retired from his position and reoriented himself once the commission of inquiry concluded. “It took me maybe eight months to say to myself: ‘I’m going to bed and I’m going to sleep,’” he confides. If Yvan Charron says he sleeps soundly today, he assures that this experience made him see life differently. “We spent the winter [2014] in funeral homes. It changes your point of view on many things,” he says.
Yvan Charron reports that colleagues even had to consult mental health to overcome this traumatic episode. “They saw things they never expected to see,” he laments.
A few days before January 23, Mr. Charron says he wants to move on: “If you stop at that all the time from one year to the next, it can’t work. » Ten years later, he regrets the absence of a police investigation which would have shed light on facts unknown to the public, according to him. “But the world said: ‘It won’t bring back our dead,’” he says.
Yvan Charron wishes to look to the future: a new RPA is under construction on the former grounds of the Résidence du Havre. “We will remember, but we will let it go,” he concludes.
A march in memory of the missing is planned for Tuesday in L’Isle-Verte.