Despite the worst deluge in memory, the situation has been made worse by 'a tsunami of toxic development', writes LORNA SIGGINSin Claregalway
WHEN ONE north Galway primary school decided to try opening again yesterday morning after five days of floods, the principal went down to the swollen Clare river to meet a man with a tractor.
Three men with tractors, actually – for a group of farmers has spent every waking hour since last Friday keeping their village open for business.
And so, with little fuss, Kieran Duggan, Jimmy Duggan and Martin Duggan – none of them related – offered to take pupils from Claregalway Educate Together National School on tractor-trailers across the torrent.
Principal Terri Claffey stayed on duty to assist the children clambering on board. “We’ll be here at three o’clock,” Jimmy Duggan assured her, and countless others who have been using the free ferry service since late last week. “These guys have been fantastic. If it were not for them, Claregalway would have been marooned,” supermarket owner Jimmy Hughes said. “They have brought in my staff, they have been here from 5.30am and 6am up to 10pm at night.”
Josette Farrell, editor of Nuacht Chláir community news and Labour candidate in the last local elections, says the situation has been made so much worse by a “tsunami of toxic development” in that area, which constitutes the inner ring of the N17 commuter belt around Galway city.
The estate where her daughter lives was flooded, electricity had to be cut off in several other estates, and far too many new developments were built on flood plains, Farrell says. Several miles up the road, a family’s brand new home at Caherlea was one of several houses under more than a metre of water. “It’s just horrific,” she says. “Thankfully, we have a terrific community spirit.”
Fortunately for Claregalway, river levels dropped sufficiently later yesterday for one lane of the N17 to reopen. However, in many parts of the county, and across county borders up and down the Shannon river basin and tributaries of the great western lakes, there have been continuing tales of distress and hardship.
Further south in the town of Gort, which knows all about turloughs and water levels from bitter experience, a “losing battle” has been fought since last week to try and pump out Crowe Street.
Furniture shop owner Mike Finn, father of three children aged 13, 10 and six, says he “now knows what hell is like”, with three feet of water in his premises and a 17-acre lake right behind.
“My business is gone, my energy is gone . . . I’m numb,” he told RTÉ Radio. He believes the €10 million allocated by the Government is “no good” when Gort would need that alone.
Irish Coast Guard volunteers in Killaloe, assisted by Doolin Coast Guard from the Clare coast, have been out walking the Shannon banks and rescuing boats, and monitoring water levels. “We expect the peak to hit at the weekend, due to spring tides, and all that water running down from Athlone,” Killaloe Coast Guard volunteer Michael Quigley said.
“It is going to be a long few days ahead.”