Floodwaters recede in southern Quebec, but risk still remains

Annabelle Olivier · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 18, 2025 5:49 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago

Communities crossed confederate Quebec are remaining vigilant Tuesday aft lukewarm upwind and rainfall implicit the play and into Monday led to flooding successful respective municipalities.

Drummondville and Beauceville were peculiarly hard hit, with the City of Drummondville issuing an evacuation notice for 300 buildings located in flood-prone areas on the Saint-François River.

Local authorities lifted the bid Monday evening, citing an improving hydrological situation, including a driblet successful h2o levels successful Drummondville and a simplification successful h2o flows upstream from the city. 

A announcement connected the city's website besides says that an exigency centre that had been unfastened for evacuees has present been closed. 

"All those requiring assistance person been taken into attraction by the Red Cross," the announcement reads.

In a connection connected X, Quebec Public Security Minister François Bonnardel praised Drummondville for its accelerated effect to the exigency and reminded the politician that the metropolis could number connected fiscal enactment from the authorities done its catastrophe alleviation program.

 WATCH | People evacuate successful Drummondville. Que., amid flooding:

Meanwhile, successful Beauceville, h2o levels remained precocious Tuesday greeting owed to an crystal jam connected the Chaudière River, northbound of the downtown core. While the crystal jam was inactive contiguous Tuesday afternoon, h2o levels were decreasing.

Provincewide, the concern has stabilized, but authorities are keeping their oculus connected the situation. 

Luc Bourassa, a spokesperson for Quebec's Ministry of Public Security, said the upwind conditions implicit the adjacent 48 hours volition apt assistance to support h2o levels down. 

He explained that cooler upwind successful the abbreviated word volition dilatory down crystal and snowfall melt, portion a wide forecast without snowfall oregon rainfall volition besides help.

Flooding becoming much unpredictable, adept says

André Bélanger, enforcement director or Fondation Rivières, a Quebec advocacy radical focused connected stream preservation and restoration, said helium wasn't amazed by Monday's abrupt flooding. 

Flooding utilized to hap aboriginal successful the play and was much predictable, helium said.

"Now what we spot ... are unpredictable events [such] as this somesthesia rising abruptly and getting crystal to melt abruptly without immoderate abbreviated notice. So we're truly into clime chaos," Bélanger said.

"The occupation is that we've built those communities truly adjacent to the rivers and we were at a clip erstwhile it was not flooding that overmuch and it was benignant of controlled and the upwind was different. Now we volition person to adapt."

Bourassa said helium couldn't remark arsenic to whether the concern was getting worse successful Quebec but said stream systems are complex and the outpouring thaw is simply a dynamic process involving galore variables. 

For example, helium said lukewarm upwind successful 1 country could impact flooding risk hundreds of kilometres away, adding that the concern changes from 1 time to the adjacent and from twelvemonth to year.

Bélanger for his part, believes it's clip for a nationalist statement connected however we negociate our waterways and however we mitigate flooding. That means deciding connected what areas to support and what areas not to protect, helium said.

"The h2o has to spell determination erstwhile there's a flood ... you cannot artifact it each implicit the place," Bélanger said. 

Before that treatment tin instrumentality place, however, Bélanger said the authorities needs to supply updated flood maps.

"So those are the areas that are going to beryllium considered arsenic a precocious hazard of flooding, which means for the owners, they're going to suffer worth connected their properties," helium said.

"When we'll spot the maps, we'll beryllium capable to person that nationalist treatment connected what bash we bash now?"

WATCH | Better flood maps could prevention lives. Why are they truthful hard to find?: