Hundreds of residents of two municipalities in Quebec’s Laurentians region have been ordered to leave their homes because of the risk a nearby dike could burst.
The evacuation order was issued Sunday night for about 1,000 properties near the Kiamika River in the municipalities of Chute-St-Philippe and Lac-des-Écorces.
The two towns are located about 15 kilometres from each other and roughly 125 kilometres northeast of Ottawa.
Joshua Ménard-Suarez, a spokesman for the province’s Public Security Department, said government inspectors found structural weaknesses in the Morier dike during a recent visit.
“They suspect internal erosion,” he said in an interview Monday.
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Environment Department inspectors “were on the scene to start temporary work,” Ménard-Suarez said, adding that they will require a minimum of five days, which is how long residents have been told to evacuate their homes.
Ménard-Suarez said all of the 563 evacuees his department is aware of were able to stay with friends, family or in hotels and did not stay in a shelter set up in the nearby town of Mont-Laurier.
On Monday afternoon, local officials issued a call on social media asking evacuees who had not registered with authorities to do so and reminding them that they needed to notify authorities, even if they were staying with family or friends.
The dike on the Kiamika Reservoir was built in 1954 and has the capacity to retain 382 million cubic metres of water, the equivalent of more than 100,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.