The Chapais fire would have cost Quebec at least $4 million

Fire 213 which ravaged hundreds of hectares of forest and which threatened to reach Chapais in June 2023 would have cost the Quebec government at least $4 million, according to data compiled by SOPFEU and the Ministry of Resources Natural and Forests.

• Also read: People from Chapais marked by the arsonist Brian Paré: “It took me almost a year before I was able to sit in front of a campfire”

To put an end to the immense blaze, the forest protection company would have spent no less than $1.6 million in personnel, equipment and related expenses, according to what the investigating sergeant affirmed under oath. Caroline Godin of the Sûreté du Québec during observations on the sentence in the Brian Paré case.

His superior, the sergeant in charge of the unit Louis Compartino, maintained that the vacations of all his troops were postponed and that they had to work overtime to ensure the safety of the population during this period of crisis.

“It’s a huge cost when you open a command post of this type. Our police officers had to work a minimum of 12 hours a day without a day off,” he underlined without being able to give an exact amount in relation to the costs of the operations.

Colossal damage

According to a forest engineering expert called to testify, the fire lit around Lake Cavan would have razed more than 742.3 hectares of mature forest.

This shortfall in royalties that companies must pay to the government to exploit timber represents 46,000 m³ of black spruce and white pine, a value of $1.1 million, explained Maxime Auger, a forestry engineer from the Timber Marketing Bureau of the Ministry of Forests.

Added to this is financial assistance of $1.1 million granted to the Barette-Chapais sawmill to enable the company to recover burnt wood which is recoverable and $165,000 for restarting production and planting new shoots. .

“At the very least, we can say that $2.4 million in damage to the forest is directly attributable to fire 213,” detailed Mr. Auger at the prosecution’s request.

The defense lawyer, Mr.^e Jean Girard, however, argued that the expert’s calculations did not include the compensatory amount that Barette-Chapais had to pay to the government to recover the wood burned on state lands.