Isle-aux-Coudres cut off after sole ferry breaks down

L’Isle-aux-Coudres, Que., has declared a local state of emergency after its only ferry broke down Sunday morning, cutting the Charlevoix island off from the mainland.

The MV Joseph Savard lost power while approaching the dock around 9 a.m. and struck it, CBC News reported. No one was injured, but damage to the dock and the vessel’s hull has kept the ship out of service, according to Radio-Canada.

The island lies about 90 kilometres northeast of Quebec City. A replacement ferry, the NM Radisson, normally used on the Quebec City-Lévis crossing, was expected to arrive around midday Monday, Radio-Canada reported. The deployment leaves that crossing with a single ship for the next few days.

The Société des traversiers du Québec triggered its emergency measures plan, STQ spokesperson Bruno Verreault told Radio-Canada. The municipality, Santé Québec’s Capitale-Nationale region and emergency transport services were notified.

Mayor Christyan Dufour said repairs were underway Monday morning in Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive. Classes at École St-Pierre were suspended for the day. “As for the ambulance service, there were two helicopter calls yesterday,” Dufour said. “This has an impact on the workers. It’s gas, it’s food. We can’t keep this up indefinitely.”

Caroline Simard, the Conservative MNA for Charlevoix-Côte-de-Beaupré, said the outage exposed flaws in the island’s emergency plan. She said she chartered a helicopter herself to evacuate a resident who had recently had a kidney transplant and became unwell. The woman was taken to Hôtel-Dieu de Québec for tests and told Radio-Canada she was doing well.

“It has few, if any, health services. The island is held hostage and is cut off from the outside world,” Simard said (translated from French). She said she hopes the Parti Québécois government will help resolve the issue.

Dufour declined CBC’s request to see the island’s emergency plan, saying several plans managed by different bodies are in place. Radio-Canada said it asked Santé Québec and the Quebec civil security agency for details on the plan but had no response by the time it published.

The outage comes as ageing infrastructure draws attention elsewhere in the region. Canada News Media recently reported that the Mercier and Île-d’Orléans bridges are at the end of their useful life, and the new Parti Québécois government is still setting its first-term priorities.

Sources: CBC News, Radio-Canada.

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