Search for 30 missing resumes at burned-out seniors’ home
Print Edition
The painstaking search through the iced-over remains of a burned-out Quebec retirement home resumed yesterday morning, with friends and relatives of some 30 missing people awaiting news.
Eight people had been confirmed dead.
As crews used steam on Friday to melt sheets of ice coating the rubble, Marc-Henri Saindon waited for his mother’s body to be recovered. Marie-Jeanne Gagnon, five months shy of her 100th birthday, had moved to the home on New Year’s Eve, her son said.
“She really liked it there. She was well treated and she had friends there,” he said.
The cause of the massive blaze that swept through the three-story building early Thursday was under investigation, and police asked the public for any videos or photos that might yield clues.
Search teams of police, firefighters and coroners slowly picked their way through, working in shifts in the extreme cold about 225 kilometers northeast of Quebec City. The afternoon temperature was around minus 16 degrees Celsius.
Quebec Provincial Police Lieutenant Guy Lapointe said authorities decided to give the search crew a break from the brutal cold and the difficult work overnight.
Only a limited number of people can be assigned to the specialized work, he said.
“The decision was taken that it was better for the safety, for the well-being of our crew, to let them rest,” Lapointe said.
Spray from hoses left the home resembling a macabre snow palace, the ruins encased in thick white ice dripping with icicles.
The tragedy cast such a pall over the village of 1,500 that psychologists went door to door.
“It’s absolute desolation,” Mayor Ursule Theriault said.
Witnesses told horrific tales of people trapped and killed by the flames. Many of the 50 or so residents were over 85 and used wheelchairs.
Pascal Fillion, who lives nearby, said he saw someone use a ladder to try to rescue a man trapped on his third-floor balcony. The man was crying out for help before he fell to the ground, engulfed in flames, Fillion said.
“I lost my friends,” said Nicole Belanger, who worked at the home for the past four years. “The residents loved us and we loved them.”
Quebec Minister of Social Services Veronique Hivon said many of the village’s volunteer firefighters had relatives at the home.
“People are in a state of shock,” she said.
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