Help for L’isle-Verte seniors was too little, too late
Help too little, too late in L’isle-verte nursing home fire, inquest hears
It was 12:29 a.m., seven minutes after a fire had triggered an alarm at the Résidence du Havre seniors’ residence in L’Isle-Verte, when the residence’s co-owner called 911.
Irène Plante, who lived on site, calmly informed the operator that “the services of firefighters” were needed. “It’s urgent.” The operator told her a call had already come in from the alarm company, and firefighters had been dispatched.
The operator asked whether an evacuation of the 52 residents had begun, and was told no.
“We are not able to get out. It’s full of smoke,” an increasingly agitated Ms. Plante said in a 911 recording played Monday at a coroner’s inquest. “We are not able. I can’t leave my apartment. We can’t see anything.”
Eight minutes later, Ms. Plante, short of breath and sounding desperate, called 911 again. “Is there help for L’Isle-Verte?” she pleaded.
Help was on the way, the inquest heard, but it was too little, too late. Thirty-two of the home’s 52 resi- dents would perish, and coroner Cyrille Delage is looking to establish the reasons for the deaths.
Police and firefighters testified Monday that by the time they arrived at the fire in the early hours of last Jan. 23, the residence’s older wing — home to the majority of the residents — was engulfed in flames, and attempting a rescue was impossible. Sgt. Steve Duguay of the Sûreté du Québec had been sitting with his fellow officers at a fast-food restaurant in Rivière-du-Loup when he received the call about the fire. He and his partner sped to L’IsleVerte, about 25 minutes away, and saw an orange sky as they neared the town shortly before 12:50 a.m.
He approached L’Isle-Verte Fire Chief Yvan Charron, who was standing by his truck. “That’s when we learned the [residents] were all inside,” Sgt. Duguay said.
He and other police officers rushed to the back of the residence and entered through the building’s newer wing. It was pitch black, there were no alarms sounding and because of the smoke, they could not see more than a foot in front of their faces, the inquiry heard.
Sgt. Duguay testified that he found about eight residents huddled inside a stairwell. “They didn’t know what to do. My impression was they had done everything possible just to get there,” he said.
SQ Agent Mathieu Fournier said he smashed a window into a room with his flashlight and discovered a resident asleep in her bed, oblivious to the unfolding disaster. He carried her to safety and continued with rescue efforts until firefighters with breathing apparatus arrived. Police carried people out in their arms, on their backs, sitting in chairs and, in one case, slung in a bed sheet, the inquest heard.
“None of the people we evacuated were able to walk, to get around,” Agent Fournier said.
Another officer on site, Sébastien Briand, took part in the rescue as flames fanned by the strong winds surged closer. Inside it was “black, black, black,” he said, and the sound of the building cracking from the fire pierced the air. Residents “were paralyzed with fear,” he testified. “We had to escort them out.”
All but one of the residents of the newer wing survived, but in the older wing rescues were rare.
Responding to a major fire in a remote town of 1,400 people is obviously more complicated than in a city, but a picture is emerging of precious time being lost during the response.
The initial call from the alarm company to the centre co-ordinating 911 response was put on hold for 30 seconds. Then the operator had to ask for the address and double-check it. The inquest heard that if the call had come in from a citizen on a regular 911 line instead of from an alarm company, it would have been answered immediately and the address would have been known automatically.
The call initially went out to just part of the L’Isle-Verte’s 18-man volunteer fire brigade, because it was not listed as a confirmed fire.
The town and surrounding municipalities had entered an agreement in 2013 to provide automatic assistance to each other in the event of a major fire. It was supposed to take effect Jan. 1, but it had not been implemented at the time of the fire, so it was left to Mr. Charron to call in reinforcements. He waited until 12:41 a.m. to call on the fire departments of St-Éloi and St-Paul-de-la-Croix.