Council blames Met Éireann over recent flooding

DUBLIN CITY Council has defended its response to last month's flash flooding, which caused damage estimated at millions of euro to homes and businesses and said Met Éireann did not accurately predict the level of rainfall.

However, Dublin fire officers said they have not been provided with the necessary equipment to control floods.

Around 150 properties in Dublin city were flooded on August 9th. Almost all of these incidents were caused by overflowing of the mains drainage system, according to a report compiled by assistant city manager Matt Twomey.

The drainage network could not cope with the amount of rain that fell, Mr Twomey said, and where the system was overpowered, council workers could provide only limited help to householders while the rain continued.

However, a spokesman for Dublin fire officers said high-powered flood pumps, such as the one used to clear 4.57 metres (15ft) of water from an underpass in Belfast last month, are not available anywhere in the State. Between 4.30pm and 11pm on August 9th "monsoon-like" rain which was "totally random and impossible to predict" fell on Dublin, Mr Twomey said.

"The Met Éireann forecast for that weekend indicated that 50mm of rain would be the heaviest that could be expected, whereas the actual rainfall in Dublin was 76mm."

There are around 55,000 drainage gullies in the city and the council checks and clears, around 1,400 every week. The council is hindered in this task by motorists parking over the gullies, Mr Twomey said.

The drainage system can cope with "normal storm-type rainfall", he said, but parts of the network could not cope with the "extreme volume" that fell on August 9th.

"The downpour completely overpowered the system in those areas, resulting in surcharging taking place and leading to flooding."

Most of the 150 flooded properties were on the northside of the city with the most serious flooding at Clanmoyle Road in Donnycarney. Few areas of the southside were affected. Around 600 calls were received by Dublin Fire Brigade, 400 calls by the council's traffic control centre, and 170 by its drainage division over flooding. Some 550 council staff, in addition to the Fire Brigade, Civil Defence volunteers and the Coast Guard worked over the weekend to alleviate the flooding.

"The city council is satisfied that, given the sudden nature of the flooding without any warning and its extreme intensity, the matter was handled in a competent manner both during the flooding itself and in the aftermath clean-up," Mr Twomey said.

However, a spokesman for Dublin firefighters said the floods could not be properly dealt with because the brigade, which is the responsibility of the council, does not have essential flood relief equipment.

"Britain has 56 high-powered pumps, which can pump out 7,000 litres of water per minute, 46 of these were dispatched to flooding in Gloucestershire last year. We don't even have one of them."

The pumps used by Dublin Fire Brigade to clear floods are the same as those used to extinguish fires and are capable of pumping about 500-600 litres of water a minute, he said. "Ordinary conventional pumps are no use for the sort of flooding we've had.

"We may as well have been taking it out with a soup spoon."