Étienne Bureau, originally from Lac-Mégantic, was Captain of Shawinigan Barracks during the Lac-Mégantic tragedy on July 6, 2013. A few hours after hearing the news, he couldn’t sit at home and do nothing. He left town with four of his colleagues to help out in his home village.
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In all, about fifteen Shawinigan firefighters were on the scene in the days following the tragedy to give on-site teams a break.
“For the first few hours we fought the fire itself to secure the site because there were obviously wagons loaded with oil,” said Mr. Bureau, now chief of operations for the Shawinigan Fire Department.
The second mission: Search the rubble for potential victims to prevent the local teams from taking care of them and discovering a loved one or family member. A firefighter from Bécancour was also called in for this task.
- Listen to the interview with Dr. Mélissa Généreux, associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Sherbrooke University and medical adviser to the Estrie Public Health Department, at the microphone of Jean-François Baril QUB radio :
“It was a matter of finding out what bone fragments could be, which had to be presented to a specialist at the World Trade Center who could determine whether they were human bones or animal bones.” We were equipped with a garden rake,” said Alain Richard, a firefighter from the Bécancour fire department and lifeguard who intervened on site.
Even today, the images exert an apocalyptic attraction on the memory of the speakers. For Étienne Bureau, however, it is the fact that he was there to help and that he is better able to live with the tragedy that has robbed him of his knowledge.