Residents might soon begin returning home in one of the remote communities threatened by forest fires that have ripped through northern Quebec.
Winds Friday were pushing flames away from Eastmain -- which has been the most severely affected of five communities near the fires, and from which hundreds of residents were forced to flee.
The residents were temporarily relocated to Val d'Or, about eight hours away.
“We called for the evacuation because it was getting too close to the community and it was very big and all the smell - it was blowing towards the community, so that's why we had to send out the babies and their mothers and the ones who have medical issues like asthma and the elders,” said Cree chief Edward Gilpin Jr.
Left to burn on their own over the past month, the fires have charred about 400,000 hectares of forest, triggered power failures around the province, caused evacuations in the North, and hampered shipments of food to village grocery stores.
Eastmain and an area gold-mine project were disrupted by evacuations in recent days. But a spokesman for the aboriginal community said he expects people to begin returning home this weekend.
"A plan is already put in place to bring the evacuees home," deputy chief Johnny Tomatuk said Friday.
"The fire has already moved on and I can say the coast is clear."
About 300 people, about one-third of the town, were forced to leave the Cree community, which is 1,200 kilometres north of Montreal.
The fires came to within four kilometres of Eastmain.
The main highway to James Bay was also closed. The closure meant food and other supplies could not be shipped into the area.
The trouble isn't over yet.
John Boudrias, who is with the Cree Outfitting and Tourism Association, said Friday that several communities could run into food shortages in the coming days.
"It's a matter of days before they're going to have to change their strategy for food," he said in an interview from nearby Chibougamau.
Boudrias pointed out that four of the communities, along the coast of James Bay, have air strips so supplies can be flown in if necessary.
But the community of Nemaska is further inland, he said, and the flames have moved in its direction.
Crews from the SOPFEU, the provincial fire-fire protection service, had been working to protect Eastmain during the past week.
The operation involved six helicopters with water buckets and about 70 people.
SOPFEU has no jurisdiction above the 51st parallel. So it has been protecting people and property -- but not trees.
Quebec Natural Resources Minister Martine Ouellet called it an unprecedented situation.
"It's evolving from hour to hour and evaluations are being done by the communities and civil protection is involved," she said in an interview.
The fires are being blamed on the driest summer in 40 years around James Bay, the hub of the province's hydro production.
A representative from Hydro Quebec said that the electrical utility giant had devised a strategy to deal with the situation.
"We're trying to redirect as much power to other axis coming from Manic-Outard further east but there's a limit to what we can do with that. It's like a giant with two legs. You can't cut off one leg entirely and still expect him to be stable and on his feet, so it's really about maintaining the stability on our network," said Gary Sutherland, Hydro Quebec representative.
Three major forest fires are being monitored -- including the biggest one, which has raged at speeds of up to 30 kilometres per hour.
Goldcorp said in a news release that it's begun evacuating employees from its Eleonore gold-mining project. A fire with prevailing winds is about 100 kilometres away and advancing toward the site.
Satellite images show smoke over a sizeable chunk of the northwestern part of the province. Some of the smoke could even be detected this week hundreds of kilometres away, in Montreal.
The fires are being blamed for playing havoc with hydro transmission lines, which has caused numerous blackouts in the province -- including a rush-hour shutdown of the Montreal metro system earlier this week.
Ouellet said she was confident that Hydro-Quebec had control of its equipment, but added that it's difficult to predict when the fires will end.
Premier Pauline Marois told reporters Friday that every effort possible was underway to deal with the situation.
But she also said several fires are so large that it's impossible to try to control them and put them out.
"We're trying to control the progression of the fire," Marois said.
"But we can't control nature."
-With a file from The Canadian Press
