After heavy rains, floodwaters begin to recede in parts of Quebec

Residents who left their homes amid the threat of flooding in southern Quebec are returning home on Wednesday, but the extent of the damage caused by diluvial rains is yet unclear and public officials are warning about the risk of landslides. 

Joshua Ménard-Suarez, a spokesperson for Quebec's Public Security Ministry, said municipalities were only now beginning to take stock of the situation. 

"Right now, [the water] is going down," he said. "A lot of roads have been damaged. We had a few cases of homes that flooded."

Evacuees in Sherbrooke, Que., who left their homes as the Saint-François River swelled to near unprecedented levels, began to return home late on Tuesday, Ménard-Suarez said. 

In Ste-Brigitte-de-Laval, a town near Quebec City that was heavily affected by the flooding, officials said residents who had to leave their homes amid a risk of flash flooding could begin to return at 10 a.m. on Wednesday.

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Ménard-Suarez urged prudence, however. The risk of landslides was high, he said, and residents who live on slopes should watch for abnormalities, like cracks in the soil, that could indicate movement. They should contact their municipality if they notice anything unusual, he said. 

Between 80 and 120 millimetres of rain — nearly a month's worth — fell on some parts of southern Quebec this week, with the Quebec City and Eastern Townships regions receiving the bulk of the precipitation. 

Bruce Chubby, a beef producer who lives in the Eastern Townships, on the banks of the Missisquoi River near the U.S. border, said the floodwaters that saturated his pastures were beginning to recede.

"I can actually see my fence posts," he said in an interview Wednesday morning with CBC's Quebec AM.

Those fence posts, which are two metres tall, were fully submerged by the rising river, forcing Chubby to move his cattle away from the water and leading him to worry about the state of his fields once the water goes down.

"In the spring we have our normal flooding here but not to this extreme," he said. "This is the most I've ever seen it."