SAGUENAY | The brother of the two children who died in a landslide during the Saguenay flood in La Baie in 1996 says he is relieved to see the city has learned lessons from their tragic death after evacuating the sector in time.
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Jason Paquet-Garceau was heartbroken by the images of the landslide that occurred on Avenue du Parc and 8th Avenue in La Baie.
Almost 26 years ago, barely two kilometers away, his brother Mathieu and sister Andréa, aged 9 and 7, perished when a mudslide tore the family home from its foundations, burying them there, sleeping in the basement.
“It’s safe to see the pictures [de cette semaine], it brought back bad memories. Exactly the same thing happened to us,” says the young man, now in his early thirties.
Make the right decision
Although he regrets that the construction of the La Baie sector did not take sufficient account of the risks of landslides on the many embankments that form the relief of the municipality, Jason Paquet-Garceau welcomes the city’s decision to take precautions in recent years have weeks.
The decision to evacuate, which 25 years ago could have saved his brother and sister, will save a family with five children this time.
“Luckily, they did the right thing. If people had been in the house, the drama would have repeated itself, there would have been deaths,” confides the man whose life was saved during the Flood since he slept upstairs with his parents.
“I dare hope that what happened to us 25 years ago convinced them to take these measures,” adds Mr. Paquet-Garceau, seeing this as a kind of sign that Mathieu and Andréa did not die in vain .
Always fear
Photo Pierre Paul Biron
The site of the most recent collapse on Thursday, three days after the event.
At the site of yesterday’s landslide, engineers continued drilling to characterize the ground on which some collapse-prone homes still rest. Below, several houses that were not evacuated were also emptied of their occupants.
“There are several neighbors who went to their family for a few days who moved away before the holidays,” says Jonathan Ouellette, lamenting the lack of surveillance in the area since civil security left the scene.
” The last night [jeudi à hier], I grabbed a dozen onlookers trying to get to the other side of the fences. There was only one security guard downstairs and no one upstairs, that doesn’t really make any sense,” criticized the resident.
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