Chris Lowrey
MUNICIPALITY OF PONTIAC July 11, 2018
The Municipality of Pontiac is asking residents to fill out a survey about the 2017 floods in order to improve its response to future inundations.
The survey, which is available on the municipality’s Facebook page, aims to gauge how residents feel the municipality responded to the emergency in 2017.
The Municipality of Pontiac was especially hard hit by last year’s spring floods with more than 50 homes being condemned as a result.
The situation was so dire that the municipality was one of the main areas to receive military assistance at the time.

In the aftermath, the municipality hired former Chelsea Mayor Jean Perras to perform a post-mortem evaluation of the municipality’s response.
Perras is well-equipped to evaluate this kind of thing, having worked on the post-mortem of the Lac Megantique rail disaster.
He met with local police, fire services, the military and other local stakeholders to take into consideration as many viewpoints as possible when it comes to making recommendations.
Part of the post-mortem’s mandate is for the municipality to publicly consult with residents. The survey will serve as the public consultation.
The goal of the survey is to help the municipality improve its response in the three phases of crisis: preparedness, response and recovery.
On the municipality’s social media page, some residents expressed frustration with the fact that a survey is coming out more than a year after the flooding.
“We would have liked to proceed earlier, but the November 2017 elections and the 2018 floods did not provide the right context,” Acting Assistant Director General Dominic Labrie said in an email.
Residents have until July 20 to fill out the survey.
The final post-mortem report is expected at the end of the summer.