A delicate operation to save the archives of the Séminaire de Nicolet

Around twenty firefighters had to intervene Monday around 7:45 a.m. at the Regional Archives Center of the Séminaire de Nicolet after smoke was observed. A delicate operation quickly got underway, that of protecting the hundreds of documents and archival objects found there.

The first thing done to protect the archives was to install tarpaulins over the documents. What we do when we get here is tarpaulin. Basically, we try to cover as much as possible, if we ever have to water, to save the archives as much as possible.says the director of the Fire Safety Service of the City of Nicolet, Martin Provencher.

In addition to having to protect the precious documents, the firefighters’ work was complicated by the absence of an obvious source of fire.

It is a defect in the ventilation system which is the cause of this deployment. The firefighters left a little more than two hours after their arrival, without having to spray water. There is no [eu] no apparent flame. The only thing we saw was a darkness as high as the [conduits] ventilationfor Mr. Provencher.

Everything is intactexclaimed the president of the board of directors of the Regional Archives Center of the Séminaire de Nicolet, Mario Landry, after returning to the premises.

Prepare better

So more fear than harm, but lessons to be learned for those who ensure that part of the regional memory is preserved. The center has hundreds of documents, books, paintings and objects, including one dating from 1476.

We have a lot of archives here, and we wondered, even if there were no losses, would there have been damage that would have meant that we could have lost documents from ‘extremely importantadds the president.

Archives are collective memory, they are individual memories. This is all that makes it important for our generation, and then for future generations.

The latter intends to learn lessons from this incident. It also allows us to see if everything is correct, if there are still security measures that we can put in place even more. You know, when incidents like this happen and there is no damage, it also allows us to recheck everything to ensure that we have all the most appropriate measures. [à jour] possible.

A board meeting is scheduled for Friday. An item will be added to the agenda of the session. The members invited the firefighters to take stock of the incident and the measures to be put in place.