Landslide in central Quebec swallows a home, forces evacuations
No injuries have been reported and no one is missing, says public security official
A landslide swept away a home and forced the evacuation of nearby residents after it created a 300-metre crater in the middle of a rural road in central Quebec.
No one was inside the home when it happened early Wednesday morning in the community of Sainte-Monique, says Sylvain Gallant, the regional spokesperson for Quebec's Public Security Ministry. No injuries have been reported and no one is believed to be missing, he said.
The Red Cross is taking care of the evacuated residents.
Gallant said he expects the crater to continue growing given that its walls are steep and the amount of clay in the soil. At its deepest, the crater is about 24 metres deep.
Gallant said the area received heavy rainfall in the last few days and is known for landslides, though landslides of this size are rarer. He says it's too early to tell what, exactly, caused this particular event and that a geology expert has been called in to analyze the situation.
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Hydro-Québec workers were on site to restore electricity access to nearby homes because an electricity pole fell into the crater during the landslide.
Quebec public security officials are advising people to monitor their properties for signs of subsidence, but Gallant noted that in this case there were no warning signs.
"If [homeowners] see some cracks in the ground, some falling trees or anything, they have to inform the city as fast as they can," Gallant said, "so we can send some experts on site to see if there's something that's going to happen. But this one this morning was pretty hard to know."