As I write this on Sunday morning [November 29th], most of the flooding in east Galway has either stabilised or begun to subside. The floodwaters in Claregalway village  have disappeared, the water has subsided on either side of the Headford Road, and Craughwell and Ballinasloe are accessible. However, things look much more serious in South Galway and along the path of the river Shannon. For farmers around Gort, the flooding, followed by frost, will cause  real hardship for the next few weeks, as their animals [some of whom are marooned on 'islands' in the middle of flood] will need to be fed and sheltered. In Athlone, the river has risen by at least a metre since I took these pictures last week. I had taken some pictures of flooding in Athlone 3 years ago – it is interesting to compare the levels then to the levels during last week.

Things look more serious at lower reaches on the river Shannon. As the floods begin to stabilize and subside in the upper stages of the Shannon (such as in Carrick-on-Shannon), parts of Limerick and Clare have not yet seen the worst of the flooding yet. I can’t believe how far the floodwaters have reached on the University of Limerick campus, as well as in Parteen. There will be a full moon this week, and the tides will be higher than last week. There is a real danger that parts of Limerick city will be inundated.

There has been a lot of discussion over who is to blame for the flooding. The answer is not always straightforward. For sure, building in places like Oranmore and Gort, or indeed most of east Galway, is always going to court the danger of flooding. These areas have been wetlands for centuries, if not longer. Every acre of land that becomes a building, or carpark, or footpath, is an acre where water flows instantly to the nearest drain or low point, rather than being absorbed by soil or vegetation. An inch of rain (which is equivalent to 25.4 millimeters) per acre is just over 27, 000 gallons of water, or almost 103 million litres. Galway received 0ver 300mm of rain in November, Athlone received 210mm and parts of Cork received more than 400mm (one station in Tipperary near the Cork border received nearly 19 inches of rain this month). The new motorway between Ballinasloe and Galway city  (which was used as an emergency alternative route during the floods)  adds about 275 acres [not counting side roads] of developed land which means that every inch of rain landing on the motorway caused nearly 7 and a half million gallons of water to flow somewhere else…quickly.

So much other development has occurred in a piecemeal manner across the country. During the boom years, hundreds of thousands of new houses were built [in 2006, the ESRI noted that one-third of the entire housing stock - over half a million - had been built in the previous decade.] No-one was knock down buildings at the same rate, so bit by bit, the ability of land to absorb water has declined.  Farmland use has changed over time too, and it may be necessary in the future to pay farmers to maintain land in such a way that benefits society by retaining floodwater rather than for just producing food. Ironically, reclaiming boggy land [something that farmers have been encouraged to do for years] has a short-term benefit by allowing better cultivation, but it means that the water that would be stored there has to flow somewhere else. Banning construction is not the answer either – Ireland is a modern, industrial country which needs more, rather than less infrastructure. We just need to be smarter when planning and building it. Funnily enough, I wrote much the same thing last year.

What is probably not practical is trying to re-engineer whole areas that are natural floodlands. We are not the Dutch. I heard someone calling on the radio for Rahasane turlough to be drained. It is the largest in the country and has been a seasonal lake forever. Where would the water drain to ? Assuming that our politicians and local councils actually sit down and try to devise a strategy [andthere is no reason at all to think that they will], it would be nice to think that hard but necessary decisions would be made and enforced. Things like proper planning enforcement, long-term analysis of water systems and management and designation of flood-plain areas where no development can take place.[ I wonder if proper flood planning will appear on even one political brochure at the next local or national elections.]

Sometimes, we just have to accept that nature will take its course and head for the high ground.

Links :

I made a video of the flooded land around the River Suck in Ballinasloe a year ago (I videoed it from the train) – it shows the ‘normal’  level of  flooding in Winter. Compare it to a video I took last week of the flooding in the same spot [be sure to mute sound before you click on the links - it's just wind noise and static].

Here is a set of pictures taken on Saturday morning of the floods to the east of Galway city.

As a follow-up to the pictures I took last week, I’d forgotten that I’d taken a set of before and after pictures of flooding in Athlone three years ago – the gallery is here. Compare it to this gallery of pictures that I took last week - the water is much higher now.

New apartments in Athlone  surrounded by Shannon flood water – picture taken on Friday morning. The line of hedge in the middle of the flood (just over the buildings in the image) is the Clonown road, clearly under water. You can see a much larger panorama of the image above here, and an even wider one here. The structure on the horizon in the large pictures is Shannonbridge power-station. Here’s an image of the apartments under construction (and guess what, there was flooding then as well).
You can tell the best and the worst of a country by how it handles a crisis. Heavy rain has caused flooding in many parts of the country causing real hardship for thousands of people as homes are flooded, roads blocked and, in some cases, electricity and water have been cut off. Cork has been very badly affected, as has Clonmel and of course, Galway.

At various times since Thursday, Galway city was completely cut off from the rest of the county and country east of the Corrib. Heavy rain over the last week caused flooding that, at various times, closed the roads to Tuam, Gort and to Dublin. Conditions really deteriorated on Thursday afternoon, and  chaos ensued as commuters tried to get home but ended up  trapped in huge tailbacks. The Dunkellin river in Craughwell flooded [again] so traffic on the Dublin Road was cut off – there were 10km tailbacks on either side of the village once the river cut off the road. In Ballinasloe (home of the Horse Fair), the River Suck overran the town bridge and surrounding houses so that anyone on their way to Dublin from Galway who had made a detour around Craughwell found themselves with yet another obstacle.

It became clear during  Thursday that the weather was going to cause serious problems, as one road after another became impassable. There were thousands of people in Galway who had come into work that morning and now needed to get home. As it happened, there was an alternative route to the Craughwell- Ballinasloe route that was entirely unaffected by the weather. The M6 motorway is due to open in a few weeks – when it does, it will be possible to drive from Dublin to Galway via motorway. The road is much higher than the surrounding countryside for most of its length, so it has not suffered any flooding at all. Construction has finished and only certification by the authorities remains to be completed. Despite the problems on Thursday, it appears that it was Friday morning before discussions began to temporarily open part of the motorway to provide an alternative route. By the time the motorway was opened, it was nearly 10pm on Friday night. It was a huge effort to get the road ready in a day but if the decision had been made on Thursday, the road could have been opened much earlier.

Taking the train wasn’t an option either. On Thursday, in Woodlawn, between Athenry and Ballinasloe, the line became flooded so the train was cancelled. For a while, there was a bus transfer but then that was cancelled too. By Thursday night, Bus Eireann had cancelled their services to Galway for the following day (which presented me with a problem -see below). Getting  information on which roads were still passable was the key. Galway Bay FM did a great job broadcasting  the latest traffic situation but their website was a disaster, with no news at all. The AA Roadwatch site eventually crashed from the huge amount of traffic it received but the AA kept broadcasting updates via Twitter. I’ve never had much time for Twitter but it was excellent over the last couple of days – AARoadwatch, Bus Eireann and Irish Rail all kept their Twitter messages flowing as the situation changed. It is a pity that their phone lines were not similarly maintained. Best of all [for me] was the a thread on Boards.ie which had the current status of all roads around Galway, maintained by the people using them (or stuck on them). Another thread on Boards.ie has pictures of the floods around Galway. As I write this on Saturday afternoon, thundery showers and massive gusts of wind are battering the city. However, for most of the day so far, it has been sunny.

There were complaints that An Gardaí  were not out in force. From what I could see, there were plenty of police, fire brigade and other volunteers out in force [the reality is that Ireland does not have a very big police force]. In Galway, so many roads were flooded that I’d imagine that Garda resources were overstretched  One advantage of the Celtic Tiger (now deceased) is that a lot of people drive SUVs/4X4 vehicles which are ideal for flooded roads. The Army were mobilised on Friday and more were to be deployed today and tomorrow. Probably the most galling aspect of the crisis was that Dermot Ahern, Minister for Justice (and therefore the ultimate chief of the police] seemed to spend more time talking about Ireland’s loss to France in a football match than what he was doing to help resolve the crisis.

As I mentioned above, I had some difficulties travelling home on Thursday. I decided to take the 4pm train home  from Athlone back to Galway on Thursday but I had left it too late. We were  told at the station that the line was flooded at Woodlawn (between Ballinasloe and Athenry) so we would have to take a bus tavel between those two stations. After waiting until 4.30 for the train to arrive, we were told that there were no buses in Ballinasloe to transport us, so we were not let on the train at all. At that point, I got a call which meant I had to return to the office (therefore condemning me to an overnight in Athlone) but the rest of my fellow commuters hung about until buses were found that would bring passengers directly from Athlone to Galway. Ironically, before Irish Rail received new rolling stock last year, they were accomplished at organizing ‘bus transfers’ at short notice – simply because the old trains were so unreliable, they had to organize dozens of them. Nowadays, the new trains are so reliable, Irish Rail have clearly got a bit rusty.

My fellow commuters kept in touch with me via text and they got home at 10 pm that night – By then, I was sitting in the Olive Grove with a half bottle of Fleurie and a lamb shank in front of me and feeling rather mellow about it all. In addition to having great food and great service, the Olive Grove overlooks the Shannon, and, as I ate dinner, I could see even more rain hammering down into the already-swollen river. I wanted to get home early on Friday but how ? The trains weren’t running and the state-owned bus company, Bus Eireann, had simply given up – no buses were travelling between Athlone and Galway. However, a private company, Citylink, were running their Dublin-Athlone-Galway service as normal, so at 9.15 we left Athlone and three hours later, arrived in the bus station in Galway city beside Eyre Square. I drove out to Salthill Promenade, where the sun was shining and a gentle breeze blowing – you would never have known that such terrible weather had hit the rest of the county.

Here is a link to a video I made from the bus as it drove through Ballinasloe and later, Labane.

Images of the Flood (from RTE) here.