Fire ravages Palettes Perron
Sylvain Dussault, the call came in at 1:52 a.m. Thursday morning. A resident living on rue Jacques, right next to the Palettes Peron building, noticed flames shooting up from the centre of the building around the silo.
By the time the fire department arrived, Dussault said flames and hot smoke were spreading quickly. Because the flames were approaching two gas reservoirs in the building, Dussault said the department had to declare a Code Red. The risk of explosion pushed authorities to evacuate the residential sector on the edge of the company’s property. Residents were awakened in the middle of the night and had to evacuate their homes for several hours. Fortunately, the safety valves held. Eventually the fire calmed down and firefighters were able to regain control of the blaze and avoid a major explosion, Dussault said.
Dussault said the local department enlisted the help of the St-isidore-declifton and East Angus departments.
When the fire was at its most extreme, Dussault said there were between 40 and 60 firefighters working to contain the situation.
By noon on Thursday, parts of the building were still burning and smoking. A team was working its way from one of the building to the other, extinguishing the last of the burning sections and flattening the building with a backhoe. A handful of employees and residents from the village watched as firefighters struggled in the smoke, dismantling the remnants of the building that had been part of the landscape for fifty years.
Dussault said it was too early to determine what started the fire, but a team was digging carefully around the area where the fire was thought to have started, looking for a potential cause.
Palettes Perron General Manager Hugo Brunelle said the company plans to rebuild, but couldn’t give any other details or timeline.
Yesterday, Brunelle said the priority was to inform the 31 employees and contact clients that have contracts with the Palettes Perron.
According to Perron, the building and tools and equipment lost in the fire amounted to losses in the millions, but he could not give an exact estimate.