Landslide in La Baie: a situation still “very critical”, says the MTQ

The mayoress of Saguenay, Julie Dufour, the director of the Saguenay fire department, Carol Girard, and Denis Demers meet the media late Wednesday afternoon at the Auberge des 21, in La Baie.

They were coming out of a meeting with the evacuees, in the afternoon, at the Old Theater of La Baie, held following the passage of Prime Minister François Legault in the morning at La Baie.

More than 190 people have been evacuated since the weekend, in the area where a residence was swept away, and which has more than 70 residences.

The purpose of the meeting was to take stock of the situation and respond to the concerns of affected residents.

Denis Demers, who is an engineer specializing in ground movement, began by explaining the interventions and decisions taken since the appearance of a crack at the end of April and which led to the evacuation of the first residences in the area.

He insisted on the rarity of the events that occurred in La Baie on June 13.

” To have a landslide as imposing as that, in La Baie, on a slope, an embankment, which has no watercourse at the base, is all the same surprising. So a slide of this magnitude, under these conditions, remains an exceptional event. So, this slippage is very big, compared to the conditions we have. It’s very rare. »

Caused by rain

Weather conditions extremely unfavorable caused the landslide with the heavy rains received at the end of May, and in particular at the beginning of June.

“The cause of this slide, which had started a little in April, the slope was holding up, but there with the very heavy amounts of rain that there was at the end of May, and particularly at the beginning of June, which is almost double, it’s almost a record, that’s what is the exact cause of the triggering of the landslide, on June 13, ”explained Mr. Demers.

The engineer indicated that the situation was currently very criticalstating with certainty that new field detachments will occur.

On Sunday, the director of the Saguenay Fire Department, Carol Girard, said that the situation was not necessarily related to the heavy rains received.

Ground detachments expected

It’s not a question of if it’s going to happen, it’s yes, it’s going to happen, additional slices of land that will go, it’s just that we don’t know when he said, echoing the comments of public authorities in the last few days, including Mayor Julie Dufour on Monday.

Slices of land 5, 10 or even 15 meters wide should stand out. Some small portions of land have already been detached since June 13th.

There are slices that could slip at any time. And there’s a huge chunk of ground here that could slip at any moment. So the situation is even more critical than it was in April showing the top of the land where the landslide occurred.

The heavy rains have affected the clay soil of the area, which is now considered sensitive clay. However, the situation should not lead to a large clay flow type landslidehe said, indicating that this type of landslide is very rare.

We can’t live with this risk

However, the authorities did not want to take any chances in the face of the presence of sensitive clay, he explained, when he and his team received the latest results from the firm Englobe, last Friday and Saturday.

Even if the probability is very low, we said, we can’t take that chanceunderlined the engineer.

Engineers analyzed the situation on Saturday afternoon and met with municipal authorities at 5 p.m.

” That’s when we told them the bad news, saying the probability is very low, but we can’t live with that risk. So we said, ”You’re evacuating even more people”. Then that’s where we added 53 more houses. »

However, the engineer did not want to compare the situation to that of Saint-Jean-Vianney. Saint-Jean-Vianney is a very, very special case. This is not the right example to give he said, repeating that the probability of a major clay flow like the one that washed away the village in 1971 is a extremely low probability.

One-stop shop: a hundred donors

So far, 59 donors have come forward via the one-stop shop set up by Saguenay on Tuesday for donations of furniture and household appliances and 34 people have indicated that they have housing available, said Mayor Julie Dufour, before the start of the encounter.

Saguenay hopes to have relocated all the evacuated families by the end of the week.

With information from Gabrielle Morissette