The Waterloo Chronicle
LA TUQUE, Canada — The Red Cross is bracing for at least a week-long stay in central Quebec to help over 2,000 people forced from their homes by forest fires that continue to rage across central Quebec.
Red Cross spokesman Jean-Francois Millette said the agency is providing emergency shelter, food and clothing for the evacuees and is readying for longer-term operation in the La Tuque region, about 150 kilometres north of Trois-Rivieres.
“The longer the people stay the more they need help, the more they need resources,” he said, predicting the evacuees would need shelter for another week.
“We will have to put kindergarten in place, we’ll have to put transportation services, health care, all that. We’ll need more volunteers, more equipment.”
Millette said some 10,000 Quebec-based volunteers are ready to be deployed if the situation worsens across the province.
Fifty-seven forest fires are burning in central Quebec and nine continue to rage out of control, but concerns over high winds have proven unfounded, giving fire crews a welcome respite.
“We did receive reports that the winds are not as strong as previously predicted so the intensity on many of the fires is not as great as we thought it would be,” said Melanie Morin, from the province’s forest-firefighting organization.
But fire services won’t know until late Saturday night exactly how far their efforts went in containing the flames.
“At the end of the day we get reports on exactly how the fire progressed, we are able to have new parameters drawn and we do our plan of attack for the next day,” she said.
Still, conditions in Quebec have improved since Friday when 16 fires were burning out of control. Crews are using water bombers and creating fire breaks as a preventive measure.
“We take it one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time,” said Morin.
About 1,000 firefighters and specialists are currently on the ground battling the blazes, including some 200 helping out from the U.S., Manitoba, New Brunswick and British Columbia.
“We will be evaluating the fires and their progression and making sure the communities surrounded by these fires are still safe,” Morin said.
Some 2,400 people were evacuated from four communities in the region earlier this week.
The Red Cross is helping Quebec handle the relocation operation in the Mauricie, the Lanaudieres and the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean regions and have about 100 workers and volunteers assisting the evacuees.
Around 1,330 people were evacuated from the First Nations community of Wemotaci and many are bunking at a local school. A further 1,000 people from the communities of Manawan and from Obedjiwan were also forced to flee the smoke.
The Haute-Mauricie region in central Quebec is the province’s hot spot where many of the worst fires are now blazing. But Abitibi-Temiscamingue, Nord-du-Quebec and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean are also threatened by the flames.
The risk of new fires remains high across Quebec and open-air fires are banned in most regions of the province.
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