⚠️ Storm Éowyn - Fri 24.01.25 (**Please read Mod Instruction in OP.**)

It has made me cringe to watch our "cutting edge" NBI broadband fiber being run through the branches of trees along the roadside. I'm still waiting for the last 400m of fiber to reach us (it will be ducted I'm told), but as it stands I'd be more confident that our current wireless broadband would be more reliable in a storm.

I’d live in a cave before I’d give that egomaniacal **** any more money. Looking forward to the day I can wave him goodbye on his voyage to mars

Have Starlink at the moment and will definitely be keeping it as a backup once NBI is available for me. I have 2 NBI cables ripped in 2 less than 500 meters from me...

Has anyone who has been without power and has a smart meter logged into their account recently?

Just wondering if the electric companies have been estimating usage?

Be a right kick in the teeth if people start getting bills for that period, you'll get the money back but still.

Looks like Mace Head's max sustained wind for Éowyn was 143 km/h. Gusts are still under review. As per Met Éireann site

12 km/h above the old national record now from 1945

Big guns arrived yesterday to clear the road.

Lots chainsaw sounds in NE Galway this morning. My sister got power restored Day Nine then water went again. Maybe its back again. 12 miles towards Dunmore no power. We spotting all the trees down on our visit to the home turf today.

100+ Sitkas to process

Only if you have an agreeable chainsaw.....

I counted 11 ESB vehicles on the M18 on Saturday. I'd say they are flat out!

Slowly catching up with the news here. Was lucky enough to have power restored after just 5 days, my neigbours though were not so lucky. They are on different connector and their connector literally no longer exists. The forest it was located in went completely down, also entirely blocking local road on the length of 300 metres. Road's been cleared by County Council, the forest is being prepared for ESB guys to have entry to rebuild the connector from scratch.

Here's what used to be a forest:

The digger with harvesting attachment used by tree surgeon:

Here, what's left off the connector: top left: a bracket which was on top of the pole, top right: bottom part of the pole left, below: LV cable tidied up a bit.

Finally, few of my thoughts: shouldn't law be changed/amended in terms of public liability? Let me explain: the poles and/or wires extremely rarely go down by themselves, they're taken down by falling trees most of the time. And those trees are on the land that belong to someone. So why not make the owner responsible for damage caused by their property?

Starlink needs power. Power gone and so is your internet. Granted you could get solar, batteries and a change over switch, but that's useful as long as the battery has a charge

The owner of the land gets plenty of cash. Part of that deal should be maintenance of infrastructure. Either by forestry or owner.

The problem would be that increasing obligations and liability would increase that cost, perhaps to the point where some will decide it's not worth the hassle at any cost / price.