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L’ISLE-VERTE, Que. — A Quebec village was jolted awake Thursday to the chaos of people scrambling to free neighbours from a seniors’ residence as wind-fuelled flames rushed to swallow the building.

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Pascal Fillion, who lives near the seniors’ home in L’Isle-Verte, said he ran outside to find a group of locals and firefighters already at the scene, trying everything to save the panicked people inside.

For the most part, he said, rescuers felt helpless against a fast-moving blaze with smoke so thick it was nearly impossible to approach the building.

“It was just like straw on fire,” Fillion said in the waterfront town of 1,500 people in Quebec’s Lower St. Lawrence region.

“People tried to do whatever they could, but the fire was so intense that there wasn’t much that could be done…

“I saw people crying, I saw people collapse because they were watching those people burn.”

Just six months after Canadians were rocked by the Lac-Megantic tragedy, another Quebec town found itself waiting to learn how many people it had lost after fire ripped through the Residence du Havre.