The Flood before the Storm?

It has been the most horrific hammering for the country west of…well just west really. There are a litany of stories of properties destroyed, farmland under 7ft of water, county towns and villages like Shannon Harbour cut off from the country. Road-diversions due to flooding themselves being flooded. Our second city hasn’t got potable water or flowing water. The number of group water schemes in Galway means that the inevitable outcome of the flood will be boil notices for the forseeable future as water carries slurry, waste and horrors into a community water supply.

The government has made a €10m fund available for those who pass a means test – not entirely living up to the humanitarian moniker but its money all the same – which is sufficient to guarantee alleviation of the worst cases. It is not hurricane Katrina but it is as close to a national emergency as we have gotten in some time. The army have done trojan work 24 hours a day in countys from Leitrim down to Cork. For many relief will only come in April with the final drawback of the winter waters and an assessment can be made of the state of vast land from Galway through Clare, Westmeath, Cork, Letrim and Roscommon.

It can be easy to overstate the damage done by flooding – a few houses here, a few farms there, but things were literally a hairs breadth from being much worse. Our second city escaped a much worse fate by as little as five centimeters of water. Anger is a slow process to develop in a situation where most victims haven’t even thought of insurance claims much less who is to blame. Yet when it comes the questions should come thick and fast – why were so many buildings ok-ed for flood plain areas? Who co-ordinates the ESB water release rates?

Where was a full-scale national co-ordination body?
Talk of it didnt materialise until this Tuesday, four or five days after the wreckage began. As a country on the cusp of bankruptcy, a public works programme now will focus on getting people back in homes, roads back in order and make proper accomodation for changing weather patterns. There is little if any money in the pot for such a works programme but it will be a pressing concern in the run up to the budget.

National solidarity is a fantastic thing, it can foment a force beyond raw economics and pull people together but the letter from Tom Clonan in yesterday’s Irish Times raises the prospect that it won’t be pulling behind the government:

Madam, – The flooding and devastation in recent days qualifies quite clearly as a natural disaster requiring a centrally co-ordinated emergency response from the relevant authorities. Unlike fast-moving events, such as Hurricane Katrina for example, Ireland’s disaster happened in slow motion, following weeks of heavy rains and high winds. As such, this disaster was entirely foreseeable.

The emergency services, coastguard, gardaí, defence forces and local authorities are to be commended for their locally innovated responses to the flooding.

The response of central government however has been lamentable. The Taoiseach, Brian Cowen was invisible throughout the crisis until his belated appearance in a series of stage-managed visits to various flooding sites.

The national taskforce on emergency planning did not seize control of the crisis until too late in the day, resulting in avoidable communications and co-ordination failures as evidenced in the unexpected release – for many vital stakeholders – of floodwaters by the ESB at Inniscarra.

A full four days into this crisis, the Taoiseach had yet to announce any plans for relief or assistance to those affected by this crisis. This entire affair represents a text-book failure in strategic planning, co-ordinated emergency response and basic political communication. Comparisons with president George Bush’s performance during the New Orleans debacle are unavoidable, – Yours, etc,

Dr TOM CLONAN, Captain

(Retired),

The School of Media,

DIT Aungier Street,

Deaglan de Breadun makes the point that this might be a relief for our pols as people are focussed away from the budget. I am not so sure, the political class need to now respond to two seperate crises – the latter requires more than calls for a stay on cuts. It is a huge political minefield and one fraught with the challenges inherent in balancing. And all of this comes home on December 9th. There is no money in the pot and now the country does genuinely need it.

There is opportunity ahoy, an the anxious burden of choice weighs on our leaders. Freedom comes with its ominous dark cloud the intoxicating responsiblity for picking one action over the other. You must make your mind up and now the burden on our pols ahead of December 9th has grown exponentially.