Flood Emergency a National Emergency

KingBrian2

With the gvt declaring the recent heavy downpour as an emergency, media outlets bombarding the public with images of mass flooding and local representatives calling on more to be done lets reassess the events leading up to storm Desmond.

Prior to the storm many commentators including those on the Internet claimed the weather was getting too much attention which was disproportionate to the actual damage that could be caused by a storm like Desmond. Now Met was informing people that heavy rain was coming and people should avoid coastal areas.

Yellow alert was upgraded to Orange Alert, so instead of getting the message out to everyone in the west a better option would have been to focus on sandbagging and evacuating scattered settlements away form flood lands. This would have been a more valuable use of resources and time.

Irish Steve

There's no long term votes for things like flood prevention, the vast majority in most areas are not affected by flooding, so neither know nor care about the problems faced by the minority, and while politicians will all come out of the woodwork when there are problems, those same politicians are nowhere to be seen when it comes to the hard fight with local or national authorities to try and get funding to deal with the problems that are caused by flooding issues.

I've been trying to get our local authority to deal with a problem since 2002, and it's now an Irish Water issue, so even less chance of any response, let alone a resolution, the only light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel is that with the change to Metropolitan districts, we have local councillors who are interested and care about local issues, but the problem they then face is the "Yes Prime Minister" mentality from the full time staff of the authority, who are well practised in the art of deflecting or neutralising anything that might threaten their comfortable and quiet existence, or cost "real" money.

Then, to make matters worse, there are all the "environmental" lobbies that "to protect the animals, fish and wild plants", they won't allow rivers to be dredged, or hedges to be cut, or all the other green issues that result in once a year cutting of hedgerows, so large chunks of debris that then block the drains and culverts, and silt in the rivers that reduce the flow capacity at pinch points, and cause flooding in areas that never used to flood. Then there's the newer issues of "health & Safety", so where culverts used to be cleaned by hand by the outdoor staff of the OPW and local authorities, they now don't have those staff, and they're not allowed to clean ditches and the like by hand any more, so machines have to be used where they can be got in to the area, and in the areas that can't be cleaned by machine, they're ignored, and the end result is a forest of debris that then (again) blocks grids and culverts, so causing spot flooding in places that never used to be a problem when they were regularly maintained.

Then you can add to that the problems caused by massive quantities of domestic waste, rubbish and green waste (grass clippings and tree prunings) that are dumped by the roadside or over the back wall of the house into ditches and culverts because people are not prepared to deal with their waste properly.

Sandbags are a nightmare, unless they are backed with polythene or similar, with the modern plastic woven a lot of the time, all they do is filter the water to get the worst of the solid debris out, they don't stop much as such if the water is deep, but they give the appearance of "doing something". If pumps are available, sandbags may reduce the flow rate, but without pumps, water will still get into the areas that are being protected, and there's a limit to the number and size of pumps available, and the running costs (especially of small petrol pumps) are frightening, we spent over €60 on petrol over a 24 hour period last year running 2 small pumps, as that was all we could get at the time. Most hire shops and the like don't have larger diesel pumps available, and getting them in an emergency is a nightmare, both in terms of cost and delivery.

Then we have the problem that over the last 20 years, there has been a huge amount of inappropriate development in places that should never have been developed in the first place, and even when people with good local knowledge objected, they were ignored or over ridden.

The last part of that perfect storm is non accountable planning officers, they make massive mistakes, but are not accountable or responsible for those mistakes, the only people who suffer are the people who bought property in places that have subsequently flooded, the people who allowed these travesties are never out of a job, or losing everything they own, or losing their life savings in a property that's effectively valueless.

It's the result of a system where people don't want to pay for anything, and of a system that has no accountability or responsibility for those in public office.

Zzippy

All the flood defences in the world will only push the problem downstream. The rivers have already been drained in the past, which has disconnected them from their floodplains. We have then built on those floodplains, considering them no longer floodplains now that we have "tamed" the river.

Ironically, if the environmental lobbies that Steve refers to were listened to, the problem might not be half as bad. While the government on the one hand is responding to calls to dredge deep and build high, at the same time it is exacerbating the problem with agricultural schemes to increase productivity that are resulting in uplands, scrubland and marginal land being drained and cleared for pasture. These are the sponges that soak up the rainfall and release it gradually, but when they are drained and cleared they no longer hold the water, they release it immediately. This clearance work is going on right now, in every parish and county, and has accelerated hugely over the last few years, under the watch and with the explicit approval of this government. Land planted with native scrub trees holds 67 times the amount of water that grassland does. Is it any wonder we have flooding now? Environmental groups have decried this land clearance, at the expense of native species, but it turns out the biggest impact is on our own people.

As an example of this government's attitude to conservation vs agriculture, the EU gave the government €438 million to pay farmers to preserve habitat for species like the hen harrier. Those farmers never got the money, and the government can't/won't tell us where they diverted it to. On the other hand, they are paying grants to farmers who clear their scrub to increase productivity. So all the extra flood defences in the world may be no use in the future as our ability to absorb water decreases and runoff rates increase exponentially.

screamer

Indeed these posts all give a good insight into why the flooding is so extensive. Simply put there is too much reliance on rivers to drain land too much tarmaced area and no natural soakage areas. Pumping and pushing the water downstream just floods further down it's not a solution either. Perhaps time to think about creating some artificial lakes along major rivers to hold more water volume.

KingBrian2

How is the coming electrification of Ireland going to impress upon the local authorities to make serious their attempts to curb the flooding of the towns parishes and communities?