An octogenarian is waiting for a call from the government for 4 months

Photo Amélie St-Yves
André Marion has been able to return home at the beginning of the month of June because his house has been flooded for two months.

Amélie St-Yves

Saturday, September 2, 2017 22:41

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Saturday, September 2, 2017 22:41

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YAMACHICHE | A widower of 80 years if prevents sometimes go out in order not to miss a call from the government of Quebec, because he always waits for an evaluator vienna to see his home, four months after it was flooded.

The house on stilts of André Marion to Yamachiche is no longer level. In the living room of the modest remains of a floor, one feels clearly that the floor is not right.

According to him, the past two months in the water last spring, but also the waves made by a boat that was going way too fast on lake Saint-Pierre on the 26th of April, gave the coup de grace to his small residence.

His house should be levelled. But the man depends on the financial assistance program in Québec to do the work. He lives only of his pension and does not have the few thousand dollars that this may represent as an expense.

Four months after the beginning of the crisis, he always waits for the visit of an appraiser, necessary to receive the as.

Mr. Marion likes to go out, between other to go and see his daughter and his grandchildren, but he prefers to stay at home, lately, to not miss the call of the evaluator. Even if he has an answering machine, he wants to pick when it will receive the call he has been waiting for several weeks already.

“That made me get into it, not just a little bit. I look forward to that brings me the money necessary to repair, at least I know that I am still okay with us for as long as I’m alive, ” he says.

Evaluator

The visit of the evaluator depends on the time the claim was made, according to the department of public Safety. Mr. Marion said to have proceeded from the beginning of June.

He revived the government by telephone at least two times, and it has assured him that he was not forgotten.

Until now, it has been able to benefit from an advance of $ 1,500 to Quebec, and of $ 600 to the Red Cross. His son has built new stairs to access the house and has done other small jobs. It has also been necessary to clean up the remains, which had been repainted last summer.

André Marion loves his home located in the Mauricie region, whose walls are decorated with pictures, especially of his wife who died on 23 December 2002, with whom he has been married for 43 years.

Memories

“It remains only that, memories, here. I look at the pictures and I talk to him again, I’m bored “, he explains.

He purchased this residence with his wife in 1995. From the beginning, they lived there six months a year and took then the road to a mobile home in the United States, a habit that Mr. Marion has maintained.

It was in South Carolina when the floods began to hit in early April. He saw his house for the first time on television while he was on a visit to her daughter, to Charlemagne, on the way back.

“I am told that my house had the air of a boat in the water, that I was going to lose everything. I told myself that I could not live it, that it did not make sense “, he says.