Due to smoke from the wildfires, members of the Nemaska Cree community living in the Eeyou Istchee Baie-James area have received an evacuation notice. They found refuge in Quebec.
Although the Society for the Protection of Forests from Fire (SOPFEU) said on Monday that all forest fires in the north-west of the province were under control, some are still causing problems in the communities.
This prompted the Nemaska community to issue an evacuation notice for those most at risk.
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After arriving around 2am on Thursday, the evacuees were accommodated in a hotel in L’Ancienne-Lorette.
Tera Diamond is one of them. In English, she says that everyone is tired, especially the elderly and children. She explains that leaving the country has become necessary for the weakest because the air quality is so bad.
I couldn’t see my neighbor’s house, which is about 30 meters from mine. At this point the smoke is dense, says Ms. Diamond.
The Eeyou Istchee Baie-James regional government says 135 people have decided to leave the country.
Canadian Red Cross volunteers feed the evacuees from Nemaska.
Fire activity in the northern zone
As already mentioned, SOPFEU assumes that the fires are under control. On the other hand, in the northern zone alone, 88 fires are still active, particularly affecting members of the Nemaska community.
In this part of the territory, SOPFEU has a mission to only fight fires that endanger communities or strategic infrastructures. SOPFEU writes on its Facebook page that the situation is worrying. Several fires are ongoing. Fifteen fires have been identified as priorities, specifically to protect access roads to the communities of Eastmain, Wemindji, Waskaganish, Billy Diamond Road, North Road, the Transtaïga and certain Hydro-Québec facilities, particularly those of LG3 and LG4.
Those fires caused outages in several regions of Quebec as of Thursday afternoon. At around 2:30 p.m., Hydro-Québec posted a message on its website stating that the wildfires in the James Bay region had triggered network protection mechanisms. Nearly half a million subscribers in the Laval, Montreal and Montérégie regions were without power at the time this news was published.
The state-owned company said there were three high-voltage lines [sont] not available for this reason, but [que ses] Installations are not damaged.
With information from Audrey Paris, Colin Côté-Paulette and Louis-Philippe Arsenault