Sitting in the front room of her home in Co Cavan, Bernice Wheatley describes recent days as “hell”. She was without power or water until Monday afternoon, but the more pressing issue on her mind is the two trees which are on top of her house, having fallen down during Storm Éowyn.
The 58-year-old, who is originally from Santry in north Dublin, relocated to Murmod, around 3km outside Virginia town, more than 20 years ago. She was asleep in her home downstairs early on Friday morning when she was woken during the status red storm.
“I was sleeping on the sofa in the sittingroom downstairs as I was so scared with the storm. I heard a sound and thought the slates had come down off the roof,” she says. “I just thought ‘well, there goes the slates’.”
Wheatley says she then heard “hammering” at her front door and discovered it was one of her neighbours. “He said ‘are you all right’. I said ‘yeah I’m fine, what are you doing out’, and he said ‘well the tree is on your house, Bernice’. I said ‘what?’ I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to look.”
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She says she eventually went outside to assess the damage when it was brighter and conditions had calmed. “I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that it [the tree] didn’t go through the house because it was quite a big tree.”
Wheatley points to two trees which fell on top of her house, one of which is lying directly on top of her conservatory and pressed against her bedroom window upstairs. She says she has no house insurance and is unsure what she will do, though neighbours have advised they might be able to help secure workers to remove the trees.
In the meantime she has moved her sofa into her kitchen and is sleeping in there as she fears the trees could come through her conservatory and possibly into her upstairs bedroom and sittingroom. “If it does come down it’s not going to get the kitchen. I can’t go any further out or I’ll be in the garden in a tent. I don’t know what I’m doing really yet. But I don’t feel safe, definitely not.”
She lost electricity on Friday morning and was without it and water until Monday afternoon. “It’s nice to have a bit of electric. “My shower is upstairs so I had the fastest shower known to man earlier.”
Over at the Virginia Show Centre the community hub has opened its doors for those without power and water to charge electronic devices and get a hot drink.
Theresa Lawlor says ESB Networks has indicated she could be without electricity until Saturday. Lawlor, who lives with her husband and their four children, aged 11, 14, 16 and 18, says it has been “a nightmare”.
“I woke up this morning with a hat and gloves on, you just don’t want to get out of bed. The house is freezing cold. We’ve no way of cooking because everything is electric. We can’t flush the toilet. When we’re washing hands one is standing over the other with the bottle of water.”
She says her eldest daughter was due to start her Leaving Certificate mock exams that morning but they were pushed back until Tuesday as a tree had fallen on part of her school, Virginia College.
She says she is considering travelling down to stay with her mother in Dublin if her power and water does not return before the weekend. “My sister came down from Kildare on Saturday evening with a little gas burner and a gas bottle so we could heat water for hot water bottles or heat beans.”
Outside the town Emma Sodem (29) is out walking with her three-month-old baby Jordan and dog Benji. She and her partner, who live in the Drumlins, have been without electricity since Friday and were told it will not return until February 5th. “Hopefully they’re [the ESB] wrong,” she says. “That would be 11 days [in total]. My mum is out in the countryside and they were told February 8th, that would be two weeks without it.”
She says it has been “tough”, especially with her newborn baby and the cold temperatures, and has been using her in-laws gas cooker to sterilise bottles. “We have a stove in the sittingroom so we’re sleeping in there. We can’t sleep in our bedroom because the room is freezing, especially with him.”
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