After talking to police, the lone overnight worker at Résidence du Havre, Bruno Bélanger, told
Quebecor Media he is "95% sure" the fire was caused by a
cigarette, lit by a resident he refused to let outside to smoke less than an hour earlier. He said black smoke was billowing above the ajar door of the man's second-floor room, room 206. When he tried to help, he "began to suffocate" and had to leave. On the way to safety, he rescued a man who had broken his leg by jumping from his balcony. The all-wooden building was partially equipped with sprinklers in a firewalled annex but not in the original structure. The investigation was hampered by a thick (up to 40 cm) layer of ice on the ruins, the firefighting water exposed to temperatures around −35 °C. Three teams of investigators worked 19 hours on January 25, in around −18 °C weather, before breaking until 7 am the next day. The teams started by chopping the ice, later bringing in ship de-icing equipment and using steam to melt ice to avoid further damaging any bodies. Officially, investigators found the first tangible clues of a cause on January 31 but disclosed nothing; police claimed it could take months to determine what happened. Fifty workers, an electrician and a chemist investigated the wreckage, armed with a
search warrant in case evidence of
criminal negligence was discovered. In late March, police investigators claimed the fire started in the kitchen, dismissing the theory of a cigarette causing the blaze. Suspecting negligence, police asked Bélanger to take a
polygraph test; he declined. The building's owners continued to cite a cigarette in an individual rooms as the fire's probable cause and called for a public enquiry. A lawsuit against the municipality of Île-Verte claimed $3.8 million on behalf of Promutuel Insurance, the Résidence du Havre and its owners, alleging that the fire brigade took fifteen minutes to arrive, was ill-equipped, was slow to call for backup from neighbouring municipalities and that Île-Verte had no evacuation or emergency plans in place. Roch Bernier and Irène Plante removed their names from the suit in December 2014; the insurer's intentions are unknown. A commission of inquiry (la Commission d'enquête sur la tragédie de L'Isle-Verte) conducted hearings in December 2014; both the
Sûreté du Québec and the coroner rejected Bruno Bélanger's theory of a cigarette fire in an individual room, citing evidence that the blaze originated in the main-floor kitchen and spread laterally. A 141-page coroner's report issued February 12, 2015 cited a lack of adequate evacuation and emergency plans, a lack of personnel on duty at night trained to help residents in case of emergency, delay in the transmission of alarms, delay in firefighters arriving on-scene, delay in requesting backup from adjacent municipalities and questionable management and execution of operations once firefighters arrived. ==Aftermath==