Claude Charron may have lost his pharmacy in Saturday’s devastating train disaster but his determination to get drugs to ailing residents couldn’t be stronger.
After losing his own business, it took the Lac-Megantic pharmacist just 48 hours to build, stock and open a makeshift drugstore for his beleaguered community.
“I have seen nothing but people try to hug us and thank us for how quick we did it,” Charron told CTV News.
Every customer is offered a free bag of toiletries and a case of water.
A dozen pharmacists have since joined Charron in his mission to make sure not another person is hurt by the disaster that rocked the small Quebec town.
On Wednesday, there will even be grief counsellors on site.
“At least there is something we can do,” pharmacist Hopelin Whyte told CTV News. “Because, I am telling you, it is not very pretty.”
They’re working around the clock – through storms and in the darkness – to fill prescriptions.
The makeshift pharmacy is lifesaving, according to one member of the community whose wife ran out of prescription drugs over the weekend.
“She’s diabetic and she suffers from Parkinson’s disease,” Bertrand Hebert told CTV News. “So she can’t go without her drugs.”
With every life saved, the new pharmacy also gives Hebert hope the town can also rebuild.
Police have now recovered a total of 15 bodies from the train disaster. Dozens of others are still missing.
The cause of the derailment is still unclear.
With a report from CTV’s Peter Akman
