MRC Pontiac — The Pontiac is once again under a total, no-exceptions fire ban. As of 6 p.m. on July 13, Quebec’s Ministère de la Sécurité intérieure re-drew the province’s open-fire ban map, and Pontiac is squarely inside it, alongside the rest of the Outaouais, as bone-dry conditions and an overstretched firefighting agency force the province to keep the lid on. Provincewide, nine wildfires are burning in the Intensive Protection Zone and another 178 in the Northern Zone; since the season began, close to 570 fires have scorched more than 640,000 hectares, an area larger than Prince Edward Island.
For Pontiac residents, the MRC Pontiac’s own bylaws already prohibit open-air fires every year from April 1 to November 15, regardless of what SOPFEU decides provincially. The only exceptions are spark-arrester-equipped fire pits and screened chimneys, and even those can vanish if local fire chiefs decide conditions demand it. Back on June 5, SOPFEU briefly lifted its ban across the region even as the fire danger index sat at “extreme,” only for MRC Pontiac municipalities to keep their own total ban in place for days longer.
SOPFEU has logged Outaouais fires this summer tied to power lines, structure fires, debris burning and recreational fires, while the province has called in reinforcements from British Columbia, Alberta, New Brunswick and PEI to fight blazes up north. With hot, dry weather ahead and no meaningful rain in sight, officials warn this won’t be the last tightening of the ban. Anyone caught defying it faces fines of $500 to $50,000 under Quebec’s Fire Safety Act, on top of the far greater risk of putting flame to a landscape primed to burn.
Bottom line: the campfire stays unlit, the fireworks stay in the box. Quebec City and your own MRC agree the woods around you are one spark away from disaster.
Sources: SOPFEU, Ministère de la Sécurité intérieure, MRC Pontiac
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