A power outage meant that Village Vacances Valcartier was closed for part of the day on Friday. The break happened after a van caught a pole during a bad move.
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This outage, which lasted only a few hours, occurred around 10 a.m. when the water slides opened. It was then decided to evacuate the site as the power outage affected all facilities, namely the hotel, Bora Parc and the outdoor water park.
At noon, the Hydro-Québec teams were able to restore power. Activities only partially resumed with the opening of Bora Parc.
“It is very rare that the site has to be evacuated. This is extraordinary. (…) In the event of rain and storm warnings, we may evacuate. Our employees in the aquaristics area know the processes and it works very well. It’s even less bad there because not many people were on the construction site,” said Sandra Nadeau, spokeswoman for the VVV.
It should be noted that this incident, which happened on a hot and sunny Friday, is causing the company to lose revenue. According to Ms. Nadeau, the VVV was ready to receive a few thousand visitors.
“We would have liked to have done without it. We haven’t reached that point in our analysis, but it’s certainly a big loss. We also had to send our employees home, they don’t enjoy it,” she added.
Partial recovery
Fortunately, the current normalized earlier than expected, around dinner time. The VVV then announced that it would be able to welcome visitors to Bora Parc from the beginning of the afternoon. However, the outdoor water park remained closed for the day.
The visitors, mostly families with children who had to turn back, were disappointed to have lost such a beautiful day. You can get a refund or a ticket for another day.
“We come from Rimouski. We rented a cabin. We’ll be back tomorrow (Saturday). We find solutions. We don’t have much of a choice,” said William Gagnon of Rimouski, who was accompanied by all of his young children.
“We’ll still enjoy the day. We were seated, ready to go for a swim. I thought we could have enjoyed the pool even though there were no waves. I thought it was a bit drastic to get everyone out. We would have played volleyball. I suspect it’s a security issue. We will be back. Maybe not tomorrow, but we’ll be back this summer,” said a customer we met outside, Francis Joly de Beauport.
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