Firefighters and Cork County Council staff joined with business owners in Bantry to battle against flooding after heavy rains led to several premises in the centre of the town being inundated with water.
Heavy rain all morning began to gather on both New Street and Main Street about 1pm after gullies were unable to take the volume of rain. Some premises were flooded as business owners struggled to contain rising water levels with sandbags and flood barriers.
Local Units of Cork County Fire Service assisted business owners by pumping water from their premises and water levels on the street began to drop at about 3pm.
It’s understood that up 20 premises may have been affected along Main Street, New Street and on the Square.
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Business owners and the emergency services are bracing themselves for a busy evening as high tide at 7.05pm in Bantry could lead to further flooding around the Square and adjoining streets if the quay walls are overspilled by water.
Elsewhere in Co Cork, there was also flooding on the Clonakilty Ring Road where a car got stuck in flood waters. There were also reports of flooding on sections of the Bandon to Kilbrittain Road as well as on sections of the N71 between Glengarriff and Kenmare.
As it transpired, high tide in Cork passed off without any major incident at 7.38pm with the surge in water leading to ponding on some low lying quays along mainly the south channel of the river Lee but never reaching a point where any business premises were threatened.
Mr David Joyce said that it was a 45 minute burst of rain between 5.30pm and 6.15pm that caused most of the problems in the city with Rutland Street suffering the worst flooding while flooding on Douglas Street and Langford Road cleared within an hour or so.
There had been fears in Bantry that high tide could lead to more flooding given the inundation that happened around lunch hour occurred at low tide but the rain had eased somewhat and was not as intense as that fell earlier in the day.
Cllr Danny Collins said the fact that there was flooding at low tide but not at high tide suggested the flooding was caused simply by the volume of rain and that it highlighted the urgent need for repair work to the town’s culverts and work to start on the Bantry Flood Relief Scheme.
“The culverts are hundreds of years old and need to be repaired and widened and we need them to be fitted with non-return valves and we need work to start as soon as possible on the major flood relief scheme for the town because this is happening far too often.
“There’s great credit due to Bantry Fire Service and Cork County Council staff who were out in force with the fire brigade helping to pump out premises that were flooded – it was bad but without the fire brigade and council staff, including engineers, it could have been a lot worse.”
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