A time to put people first as we battle the winter storms

One of those golden nugget of country wisdom back the years concerning weather, climate and the building of houses was to ‘ask someone’s grandfather’ [or grandmother] if they were unsure about the vulnerability of a particular area to flooding.

The logic behind that approach was that, if an area flooded back the years, then it would do so again. It really would only be a matter of time as floods and flood plains are cyclical by nature. Unless specific remedial actions have been taken, the floods will once again return to where they always have been – it’s just a matter of when.

Last weekend, Storm Desmond left a fair trail of problems in its wake. The two aspects of Desmond that caused real bother were the amount of rainfall it deposited and the length of time that it took to cross over Ireland – from early on Friday evening to the early hours of Sunday, a span of roughly a day and a half.

The rain bearing ‘tail’ of Desmond essentially got stuck over Ireland, and in particular the western half of the country, its way ahead essentially being blocked by high pressure that had sat in over continental Europe. The end result of that instead of the storm flying over in the space of five or six hours, it just got trapped over Ireland and delivered it’s full payload down on top of us.

As with all times of stress and worry with floods, the call for different actions to be taken will be made and listened to, but probably not acted upon. When the fine weather comes back and the land dries up, then the whole sense of purpose for doing something about floods completely loses its head of steam and there’s not a word about it again until the next deluge.

The time to plan ahead for floods is when the fields are green and dry; when the channels and drains can be cleaned and unblocked without leaving a mark on the ground; when the narrow bridges can be widened to take peak water flow and most importantly when the lives and welfare of humans, takes precedence over more aesthetic values.

For every flood relief scheme that’s proposed – and many (admittedly not all) of them are actually simple enough to plan – there will be at least 10 obstacles put in the way. Maybe it’ll be the fish, maybe the birds and the bees, maybe a snail or two, but one thing can be guaranteed: before one machine moves in to clear off a rotten tree in the river, it will be hard earned.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.