Youngsters put their lives at risk at height of the storm

By Frank Farragher

THE city escaped relatively unscathed from Sunday evening’s storm – but the City Council has appealed for common sense to prevail during such weather events after a group of young people were seen diving off the tower in Blackrock during the height of the winds and rain.

A spokesman for the City Council said that ‘as unbelievable as it might seem’, a group of young people were seen diving off the Blackrock Diving Tower during the worst part of Sunday evening’s storm.

“It might seem incredible but some people were actually diving off the tower on Sunday evening during the height of the storm.

“We really to have to make an appeal to the very small minority of people involved in those actions to think of what they are doing – their actions defy all the basic tenets of common sense,” said a spokesman for the City Council.

He added that such people were not just putting their own lives at risk but also the lives of people involved in the emergency and rescue services, if a problem arose.

The City Council spokesman said that the storm wasn’t as severe as initially had been predicted and the situation was also eased by the fact that the high winds and peak tides did not coincide.

As a precautionary measure, a section of the Prom was closed for about an hour on Sunday evening between Seapoint and Grattan Road while there was also some minor flooding at the entrance to Toft Park, near the Galway Atlantaquaria.

The City Council had emergency crews on duty over the weekend with their ‘gulley sucking’ truck on round-the-clock duty – overall the series of precautionary measures put in place seem to have worked.  

The Council have asked residents and businesses in vulnerable flood areas to ‘stay on the alert’ over recent days due to more unsettled conditions on the way, most notably on Wednesday evening/night when another intense area of low pressure is due to cross the region. 

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.