It was perhaps the speed of the surge as much as the volume of water that hit Midleton during Storm Babet a year ago that caused tens of millions of euro worth of damage. Householders and businesspeople had little chance to prepare for the deluge that hit them.
Met Éireann had issued an orange rain warning for Cork and Waterford as Storm Babet moved across the country on October 18th, 2023. The warning proved inadequate when 126mm of rain – virtually an entire winter month’s worth – fell in just 36 hours.
Kieran Goldspring reckoned it took just eight minutes for his terraced house on McDermott Street in the centre of Midleton to flood with water after the river Owenacurra burst its banks at lunch hour. This sent torrents of water down Main Street and elsewhere.
[ In pictures: The clean-up begins in Midleton after Storm BabetOpens in new window ]
“It came in both the front and back doors, and within eight minutes the house was under a metre of filthy water. We had just put in a new kitchen in August at a cost of €15,000. It was destroyed. It got into the washing machine, the dryer, the fridge freezer – everything was destroyed.
“We lost everything, even family photos. We were lucky that we had flood insurance, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to repair the damage and we would be homeless, but we can’t get flood insurance now, so we are fearing a repeat of Storm Babet, and that’s a huge worry.”
According to Damian O’Brien, a member of the Midleton Chamber of Commerce Flood Relief Scheme subcommittee, about a third of the 104 affected businesspeople had flood insurance. Many had lost their cover following bad floods in 2015 and 2018.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade, and Employment set up a compensation scheme to be administered through the Irish Red Cross for those badly damaged businesses that did not have such insurance. Some 266 applicants received a total of €9,273,963.
Not all businesses bounced back. Among those that closed was the Farmgate restaurant in Coolbawn. It was founded by Maróg O’Brien 40 years ago, and then run by her daughter Sally O’Brien, who took the decision to close in Midleton and move to Lismore.*
“When we were hit in 2018, we were out of action for about seven weeks, but this was worse. All our kitchen equipment was destroyed but the real problem was the building. We were told by a structural engineer that we could not return to the building due to the water damage.
“The works that needed to be done to the building were huge because the building pretty much drank the water and, because we were flooded in 2018, we had no flood insurance. It was a huge wrench for us to have to leave but we knew that it was over for us at Coolbawn.”
Like Farmgate, Denbar Jewellers was also badly hit by the flood. A metre of water sweeping into the shop forced owner Barbara Hurley to undertake a big revamp as her solid beech units were destroyed.
“I had flood insurance, which was completely inadequate, but because I had flood cover, I didn’t qualify for the Red Cross grant. It took me three months to reopen. I asked if I could draw some payment when I was closed and I couldn’t because I was self-employed, so I didn’t get a cent.”
Hurley reckons her insurance covered just 25 per cent of her bill. Although she is still angry over the lack of government financial support for business owners such as herself, she says mental distress was the biggest impact of the flood on the people of Midleton.
“People are living in fear. Traders are trading in fear because if something can happen once, it can happen again. You’ve no idea of the mental trauma of doing business in this town, let alone living here – the mental scars that this has left are huge. We feel completely at the mercy of the river.”
Hurley, like others in the town, welcomes the interim flood relief works being carried out by Cork County Council, including the removal of debris and the collapsed remains of Moore’s Bridge from the Owenacurra. Yet she wonders why it wasn’t started last spring and completed before winter sets in.
Such interim measures as clearing the river were among the demands of Midleton East Cork Flood Protection Group, which represents about 500 house owners in Midleton and other affected areas such as Mogeely, Killeagh, Castlemartyr, Ladysbridge, Dungourney and Whitegate.
In February the group delivered a petition with 15,000 signatures to politicians at Leinster House, expressing their anger at the lack of urgency in addressing the flooding problem. In May, up to 3,000 people marched through Midleton to again highlight the issue.
Among them was Caroline Leahy, whose house in the Tír Cluain estate, north of the town, was flooded to a depth of a metre. Her focus, like that of fellow flood protection group member Goldspring, is on obtaining flood gates or removable Individual Property Protection (IPP) for her house.
“My own house and some 70 or so of my neighbours in Tír Cluain were flooded and along with the other members in the group, we are asking for grants to enable us to buy IPPs that you can put in front of your doors to stop the water coming in,” she says.
“It’s being suggested to us that we could get grants of €3,900 from Cork County Council from an OPW fund, but my quote is for €4,500 and I know of others that have got even higher quotes, and the price is rising all the time because there is such demand and effectively only one supplier in Ireland.
“We want the IPP to be fully grant-aided because some people can’t afford the full cost, and in Tír Cluain for example, there’s no brick wall between the semidetached houses – just stud walls. So if a house isn’t fully protected, waters could come into the house and flow into their neighbours’.”
Goldspring makes a similar point regarding McDermott Street. If he puts up an IPP to stop water entering his end-of-terrace house but those farther along the street can’t afford to get the flood barriers, the effect will be to displace water from his property towards them.
Meanwhile, O’Brien, who, with his wife, Laragh, runs clothes shops Fox & Co and Flamingo, believes the Midleton Flood Relief Scheme won’t be operational until 2032, given the planning process won’t start until late 2025. It is currently budgeted at €56 million and designed to protect 700 properties.
O’Brien, a chemical engineer by training with experience of big construction projects in pharma, reckons a detailed design process will last into 2027. With construction scheduled to start in 2028 and take two years, the scheme is scheduled to be handed over and operational by 2030.
“From my experience, there is always some slippage in big construction projects where you can lose a year, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that happens here and we’re into 2032 before the scheme becomes operational.”
Like other traders in Midleton, Sinéad Morrissey of Bertelli Menswear on Main Street is apprehensive about the future, even though she is grateful for the government aid she received through the Red Cross and the great support from locals who continue to bring their custom to her door.
“My mistake that day was I tried to save stock,” she says. “I should have saved the files in my office because I’ve spent the last year printing out every invoice again, just trying to put an office together again. It was like starting another business again. I wouldn’t want to go through a year like it again.
“It was catastrophic and people are worried there will be a repeat given the scheme is maybe six, seven, eight years away. I can’t control what happens on the street in terms of flooding, but I’ve made the best plans I can to try and save stock in here in the shop.
“I have my stock in my storeroom in plastic boxes ready to be moved upstairs to a loft, and hopefully that will work if there is to be another bad flood. I’m only hoping if there is a repeat and Midleton is under water again, it doesn’t happen at night or then we’re all down the Swanee.”
* This article was amended on October 13th to reflect that Maróg O’Brien founded the Farmgate restaurant
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