L’ISLE-VERTE, Que. — The painstaking job of recovering the remains of those who died when fire, whipped by fierce winds, roared through the Residence du Havre in this Lower St. Lawrence village is being complicated by thick ice and the collapse of the three-storey building.

Eyewitness Christian Morin, who lives next to the seniors’ residence, said the fire broke out at about 12:30 a.m. and local firefighters, assisted by firefighters from five neighbouring communities, responded quickly.

"They couldn’t do anything, with the strength of the wind," Morin said, adding that the focus was on saving surrounding buildings.

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The confirmed death toll rose to five last night, with 30 still missing. Twenty people were rescued from the residence, 11 of them are now in hospital,

Lt. Guy Lapointe, of the Surete du Quebec, the provincial police force, said the residence had 52 units and police have not determined exactly how many people were there at the time of the fire.

"We have to ascertain who was physically there at the time of the blaze, who was out visiting relatives (or) at the hospital," he said. "Were people there visiting? We can’t just go with who lives there to determine who’s missing."

"We want to be 100 per cent sure."

A stricken Jacques Berube stood outside the residence Thursday morning as he pondered the fate of his missing 99-year-old mother, Adrienne Dube.

Berube, 70, tried to locate her at a hospital in nearby Riviere-du-Loup as well as at a school in L’Isle-Verte, where residents were initially taken.

Berube was getting ready to hear the worst about his mother, who is blind but still mobile.

"I went near the building; the corner where her room was is burned," he said. "I’ll just have to wait and see. I don’t like it. But I don’t have any choice. It’s just reality."

Mario Michaud, who lives across the street from the building, said he witnessed the drama unfold shortly after midnight.

"The fire had started on the second floor," Michaud told local newspaper Info Dimanche. "I woke up my girlfriend and called 911. I saw the firefighters and they got to work.

"A woman on the second floor was shouting and she went out on to the balcony. Her son went to get a ladder but he couldn’t get to her. She burned to death."

Yvan Charron, chief of the L’Isle-Verte volunteer fire department, said the ice is "three or four inches to one foot thick" in places at the fire scene.

The provincial police has taken control of the site, setting up a Red Zone on the site of the fire and a Yellow Zone in the vicinity.

Powerful lighting equipment has been brought in for crews of police and emergency workers so that they can begin to chip away at the ice.

"In the coming hours, if everything goes well, we will begin to work at the scene," Lapointe told reporters.

"And if the lighting equipment we have brought allows, the objective is to work all through the night."

Jean Belanger, of civil security for the region, explained that in this village of 1,200, everyone knows some of the victims and that has had an impact on the rescue effort.

"People know one another," he said.

Emergency workers from neighbouring Trois-Pistoles, Riviere-du-Loup and Rimouski have volunteered to relieve them and have expanded the pool of rescue workers.

But temperatures of -35 C, with the wind chill, are complicating the effort.

"It is so cold people can’t search for one or two hours," Bélanger said. "They will maybe work for half an hour and then will be relieved so they can rest."

Lapointe said he understands people want to know how many are confirmed dead, "For us, right now, what dictates our agenda is really to do things right," he said.

"You have to understand that because the building has collapsed, all the water has frozen in ice."

"When you want to go in and maybe retrieve the people that were there, you want to do it very delicately because breaking the ice, you don’t want it to damage ... the scene," he said. "Obviously, you want to do it respectfully for the potential victims."

Lapointe would not speculate on what caused the fire but said the investigation by the police, assisted by the coroner’s office, will look into all possible causes, including a possible electrical problem and the effectiveness of sprinklers.

Police will talk to witnesses and experts.

"But you have to understand right now the investigation is barely beginning," Lapointe said.

First police must recover the bodies and sift through the scene for clues as to what caused the fire.

"I’m not going to go into the specifics. Needless to say, that we do it very delicately.

"We have a lot of equipment that’s been deployed. The level of difficulty is very high, I won’t lie to you, given past experience.

"We have very competent people on the scene right now, the very best, to be able to start finding the missing people.

"Everybody is out there doing their best."

The building also housed a pharmacy and a community clinic. Health and social services official Daniel Levesque said the pharmacy has been relocated and the health service is looking for a new site for the clinic.

Levesque also said six psychologists and social workers have been deployed in L’ILe-Verte to offer counselling to relatives and rescue workers.

Two police officers were treated in hospital for smoke inhalation and third was treated for a back injury.

With files from The Canadian Press

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