The hope of finding the five French disappeared in Quebec alive, snowmobile accident victims Tuesday, Diminishes over the hours.
The snowmobile accident occurred Tuesday evening when the group of eight French tourists and their Canadian guide left a marked trail to try to cross the mouth of a river east of Lac Saint-Jean. The ice, too thin at this point, gave way under the weight of the machines. Three of the French have survived, five have disappeared. The guide, a 42-year-old Quebecer who fell into the water, died in hospital on Wednesday.
Six snowmobiles found at the bottom of the water
Men aged 24 to 58
Thursday, throughout the day, around thirty police officers, including a dozen divers equipped with a small underwater propeller and sonar, scoured the area located east of Lac Saint-Jean, near the commune of Saint-Henri-de-Taillon, about 225 km north of Quebec City. Two helicopters and drones were in support. Search operations, which were lightened after dark, were to resume Friday morning.
“A total of six snowmobiles were found” at the bottom of the water in the unmarked area where the accident took place, said spokeswoman Béatrice Dorsainville. This discovery confirms the most pessimistic assumption that the five tourists sank into the icy waters with their machine. They were driving in an area known to be dangerous where the ice was either too thin or absent. And they probably left the marked trails to take a shortcut and reach their destination faster, according to several experts.
“This podium is for him”
The Sûreté du Québec published on Thursday the identities of the missing, originating, like the three French survivors, from eastern France. They are Gilles Claude, 58, Yan Thierry, 24, Jean-René Dumoulin, 24, Julien Benoît, 34, and Arnaud Antoine, 25.
Gilles Claude is the father of three international biathletes, Emilien, Florent and Fabien. The latter climbed for the first time on the podium at a stage of the Biathlon World Cup in Pokljuka, Slovenia. He dedicated his third place to his father. “There was a tragic accident in Canada for my father,” explained Fabien Claude on the television channel L’Equipe, accompanied by his brother Florent, also a biathlete on the Belgian team. “This podium is for him, I am sure he is proud of us and I am proud of what I have done today. The goal was not necessarily the result, it was to pay tribute and do the best possible, “he added.
A special day, and A star that will accompany us all our lives, we love you dad pic.twitter.com/oIsIiBleQ8
– Fabien Claude (@ fabien_claude1) January 23, 2020
Gilles Claude was used to snowmobiling in Quebec, testified Michel Bellerose, the founder of the rental agency Haute-Matawinie, who rented the motorcycles on Monday from the French group. “These are people we see regularly, once a year for several years,” he said, upset, on the public channel Radio-Canada. “We talked together, they are passionate. They are not tourists who knew nothing about snowmobiling. ”
The three French survivors, who had raised the alarm, were briefly hospitalized for frostbite and nervous shock.
For its part, the province of Quebec, which wanted to learn from this unprecedented drama, announced Thursday that it would impose training on guides and tourists who rent these machines. Each year, this practice kills more than 20 people on average in this province alone.
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