Billowing smoke from industrial building

Black smoke from Chateauguay’s industrial sector stretched on for kilometres early Saturday morning, following a fire that broke out in a building owned by a waste management company. No one was inside the building at the time.

The roughly 8,000-foot building was completely ravaged by the flames. It’s owned by the company GFL Environmental, which had been using it to store machinery. Three gas tanks used for welding were also within its interior, the city’s fire department shared.

Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) grand chief Cody Diabo reached out to mayor Éric Allard the same day about it, saying he was relieved to find out it wasn’t a chemical fire.

“I started hearing about it, and some community members had reached out to me,” Diabo said.

The city’s fire department was notified about the fire just off Industrial Boulevard at around 7 a.m. that morning. The cause of it is still not known, the city shared.

About 30 firefighters showed up to extinguish the flames, including many that came in from St. Constant, La Prairie, and Beauharnois.

Much of the fire was put out by 10 a.m. It still took until 4 p.m. until the scene was cleared however, as an excavator had to be brought in to take down a structure covering some of the remaining embers.

Pump trucks also had to be brought in to suction up wastewater being stored in five-million-litre basins there. No run-off made its way into the city’s sewer system or any surrounding ditches, a city spokesperson assured.

The city notified Quebec’s environment ministry about the incident, but no inspectors needed to be called in, they said. The smoke also wasn’t serious enough for the city to issue any restrictions on those passing through the area.

The Kahnawake Environment Protection Office (KEPO) also made sure to monitor the air quality in the territory throughout the day.

“At around 7 a.m. we got a big peak of particulate matter,” said Cole Delisle, responsible for overseeing what’s picked up on the air quality monitors they operate.

That peak lasted under an hour, he said, and was recorded on their monitor located on Route 207, just north of Highway 30. It hit an air quality index of 170, which is considered unsafe for the elderly and those with respiratory problems like asthma. Luckily, it only stayed that high for a short while, Delisle said.

“It’s really the long-term exposure which is a problem,” he said, adding it’s more in the 300 range that people would be urged to stay indoors.

In the instance something like this were to happen again in Chateauguay’s industrial sector, Diabo said he hopes to hear directly from the city as soon as it unfolds.

“Definitely for things like that, I think, especially along Industrial (Boulevard),” the MCK grand chief said.

He said that’s something he’ll be bringing up to mayors in surrounding municipalities as well.

“I’ll probably reinforce the need to communicate with Kahnawake when there’s some type of incident that occurs along the border,” he said.

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