Late Saturday night Beauceville firefighters raced to the Royal Mat recycling facility, roughly 90-kilometres south of Quebec City. A fire started in a pile of thousands of used car and truck tires and by sunday morning the community was shrouded by a cloud of dark smoke.
Beauceville firefighters and those from five neighbouring communities converged on the large fire at the Royal Mat tire recycling facility. Nearly 3,000 cubic metres of discarded tires are at risk of going up in smoke and causing an environmental emergency.
The Operations Director for Quebec's Ministry of Public Security, Jean Sauveur, said the province's environmental emergency team arrived on-scene early Sunday morning to test air quality. Residents were warned to stay indoors with their windows closed and to ensure any outdoor ventilation systems for their homes were turned off until test results are available.
"Our experts from the Environment Ministry are doing some analysis now to be sure that the air quality is good for the people that are living in Beauceville," he said.
Firefighters have been spraying two massive piles of old tires with water and fire retardent foams, in addition to creating fire breaks around the blaze - similar to techniques used battling forest fires.
"They will dig some sand all (around) the fire to make sure that at the end of the day it will be all stopped," said Sauveur.
Sauveur added there is no immediate danger to residents and that much of the smoke from the Royal Mat facility has been hanging high above the city and not at street level.
Public Security officials say updates about the fire are being made available on the Urgence Québec website, as well as Twitter and Facebook page.
The cause of the blaze remains known, but arson is not being ruled out yet, as firefighters focus on trying to protect the company's buildings. The Beauceville department called for back-up and received support from fire officials Saint-Joseph, Saint-Odilon, ,Saint-Georges, Saint-Benjamin, Saint-Victor, Saint-Éphrem, La Guadeloupe, Tring-Jonction and East-Broughton.
Royal Mat produces products made from more than 4.5 million used tires each year and an official with the municipality told media that this time of year is when they have the most used material on site, which coincides with Quebec's snow tires deadline for motorists.