BY EMMA CONNOLLY and MARTIN CLAFFEY
WHILE Bantry town centre was hit by a deluge last weekend, flooding 27 local businesses, many residents and farmers throughout West Cork were also battered by the weekend floods, with some facing thousands of euro worth of damage.
Flashback - to a headline in the Star in ... 1937.
One Mealagh Valley farmer, based just outside the town, said affected farmers should be given access to the same government relief fund as the businesses hit by the devastating floods, adding that the rising waters left her farm looking ‘like Bantry Bay’.
Properties near Caheragh, between Bantry and Skibbereen, came within feet – and minutes – of being devastated by floods, after a tributary of the River Ilen burst its banks, releasing torrents of water in minutes.
WATCH BELOW:
Homeowners in the low-lying townland of Coarliss have seen some flooding in the area previously, but nothing like the ‘frightening’ magnitude of last Saturday’s deluge.
Patrick Murray was on his way to Dublin with his wife when a neighbour rang to tell him of rising water in fields by his home.
‘I phoned my brother to check our house and at that stage all was fine. That was around 12.30pm and literally, 20 minutes later there was water flowing down the road, filling the fields behind me and coming into our garden,’ he said.
They were in Tipperary at this stage and immediately turned around. On arrival back in West Cork, Patrick could only access his property by foot. Water had surrounded his house and came within two feet of his front and back doors, but mercifully, the house didn’t flood.
‘The river is half a kilometre from us and the road in front of us never flooded before like this,’ he said.
Nearby neighbour Gene O’Driscoll recalled last Saturday as ‘horrendous’.
A ‘river’ flowing on the road outside Gene O’Driscoll’s home near Caheragh.
‘Naturally we were aware of the weather warning and to be on the safe side I decided to get a water pump from where I work. I left around 12.30pm and when I came back at 1.15pm, I was barely able to get in home. The river Glounaphooka runs around my property and burst its banks, and water was pouring through a ditch. There was a torrent of water flowing in, the road was like a river with three to four feet of water, and water was up to the path around the house,’ he said.
‘At one stage we did have a conversation about moving things up from the ground in the house, but thankfully it didn’t quite come to that. But for at least two hours it was make or break. It was frightening for a time, because we were unsure if the house would survive,’ said Gene.
Patrick and Gene credit quick-thinking neighbours with preventing the situation from escalating. They arrived with sandbags and diggers to burst the ditch. If it had happened at night, or during a weekday when people weren’t around, the situation would have been much worse, they said.
‘Corney Murphy came with a digger to burst through a ditch on his land and that relieved the pressure,’ he said. They were helped by neighbours and friends Dennis McKennedy and his father Neilie, Keith Kennedy and Eoin Murphy. ‘My own sons Kevin and Colm, nephew Mark, brother Tony and wife Julie were all there helping as well,’ said Gene. ‘We were lucky with the timing.
‘The right people with the right equipment were around.’
Neighbour Keith Kennedy could see the potential disaster unfolding before him.
‘In the space of 10 or 15 minutes, the river was flowing on the road. Dennis came with a bucket of sand and we used these to make sand bags to protect houses that were in danger, and, along with the two diggers, we were able to prevent any damage. It was absolute mayhem for an hour or two. I’ve been living here for 20 years and have never seen it this bad, and my wife has lived here all her life and never saw anything like this.’
Gene agreed they had never seen anything of this magnitude.
‘This was the worst I’ve ever seen and it’s a red flag – something needs to be done.’
Gene and Patrick both feel that there’s a relatively easy fix to the threat of flooding – to clean the river.
Patrick has lived in the area for 17 years and has raised the issue previously with the OPW and the Council. He said he’s never had a reply from the OPW, but after Saturday’s flooding, he was told the Council will be in touch.
‘We were lucky this time – not a drop of water came in. But we can’t get flood insurance and we don’t know when this is going to happen again,’ he said.
Meanwhile, Helen O’Sullivan near Bantry also saw the flood waters around her farm rise to unprecedented levels. ‘Our farm takes in the Mealagh Valley and the flood waters went everywhere.
Martin Collins wading through the water at Paddy O'Donoghue's butchers on Saturday. (Photo: Andy Gibson)
‘I don’t remember anything like it,’ she said. ‘My mother said there were huge floods in 1986, but I’ve never seen anything like the weekend. Our land looked like Bantry Bay,’ said Helen.
‘Around 30 acres were completely flooded. We normally have suckler cows on the land there and luckily we had heeded the weather warning and had moved the animals.
‘But now we have had to move the animals indoors and they need feed, which we had not planned for.’
Helen said that she now is left with a bill for thousands of euro – to cover everything from resurfacing farm roads to animal feed.
WATCH BELOW:
‘Minister Kieran O’Donnell was in Bantry, which is great, and it’s only right that businesses should be compensated – but what is available for farmers? There needs to be supports for affected farmers.’
The matter was raised in the Dáil by Cork South West Deputy Michael Collins. ‘I raised in the Dáil the need for a compensation scheme for farmers who had lands destroyed due to flooding, and why the Ring road in Clonakilty is continuously flooding and what can be done to elevate this.’
