The Voyage Home

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.