“This is one of the worst natural disasters that we had in Louiseville.”
Yvon Deshaies remembers too well with the evening of August 9, 2024. Back from a visit to the GP3R shorted by the heavy rains that fell on Trois-Rivières, the mayor of Louiseville has been at his home for barely thirty minutes when his phone rings.
“It is Mr. Boilard (René, the director of public works) who calls me to tell me to go to the town hall, because we are losing the city.”
— Yvon Deshaies, mayor of Louiseville
The mayor does not yet know, but the long hours of work following the passage of the remains of the storm Debby will start to accumulate from this moment: a driving of the Grand Pré Régie, more than one mud foot covers the Denis-Paul arena floor and the streets of the Dalcourt avenue sector are invisible, so the rain sewer network is overloaded.
Water from agricultural fields north of the city rushes and floods the basement of hundreds of houses.
In total, some 350 residences are affected by this rain which continues to fall.
“When I saw the water go up, I thought that a dam had given way somewhere. It was like a tsunami who descended from the fields, rollers of water and a half in height that came to the city. It was a swell. It didn’t make sense. ”
— Yvon Deshaies, mayor of Louiseville
The public works team is on site, firefighters ensure the safety of the best they can, elected officials are at work, but everyone is helpless in the face of the strength of Dame Nature.
“It was sad to see that. I was going to encourage people. But the guy who has six feet of water in his basement, you can’t do much. We had to maintain our intervention for people’s safety. We couldn’t do more. ”
The mayor remembers that employees of the Marquis printing house had to be evacuated into a mechanical shovel so there was water in the parking of the company.
The rain ends up stopping and the day ends up getting up, which makes it possible to see the extent of the damage. And they are major: floor coverings, furniture, household appliances, gypsum walls, everything is to be thrown away.
Drown by discouragement, but forced to react, citizens are busy emptying their basements. The days that follow reveal mountains of debris along the streets, as many proofs of the force of Debby.
The state of the situation pushes Yvon Deshaies to ask for help from the army. Visiting Louiseville a few days later, Prime Minister François Legault announces that he rejects the possibility of making this request.
One million dollars in damage
The city had to clean its arena and replace different materials. Only for this infrastructure, the damage amounted to $ 475,000. By counting the additional working hours of its employees and the burial costs of different debris, the city ended up with an invoice of about a million dollars.
This amount excludes everything that has been invested by citizens whose property has been flooded.
Faced with the dramatic situation, Yvon Deshaies says he is proud of the reaction of the city team and its fellow citizens.
“I noticed my team’s composure. The people of the roads, the firefighters, the council was there, the leisure leisure led. And what came out of this disaster is solidarity. People were resilient. They said to me: ‘we’re going to stand’ ‘,’ we will go through ”, ” my neighbor will come and help me ”. People worked together. Neighbors who were no longer talked about made peace. I found it great. ”