Michael Moynihan: Should there have been a status red warning in Cork for Storm Babet?

Wednesday was a testing day for people living in the path of Storm Babet, which disrupted quite a few areas. Cork got a particularly bad lash from the storm, as readers are no doubt aware.

If your smartphone was working yesterday, you probably saw the footage which was being uploaded from all over Cork. That footage showed scenes which custom dictates we describe as unprecedented and shocking, but they were also frightening, to be honest.

Streets were flooded in and around Cork, with people reporting areas which had never been flooded before being inundated. There was traffic gridlock in many parts of the city during the day and it was clear that some cars had simply been abandoned in rising waters.

People who had commuted to work couldn’t get back home, or got back home hours later than usual; both rail and bus services in Cork were seriously affected by the weather.

The litany of black spots is depressing, and in some cases depressingly familiar: Blackpool flooded, for instance, but so did Glanmire village and roads were impassable in Ballyvolane, Rochestown, Blarney, Tower, and elsewhere. The Straight Rd flooded when the Lee itself burst its banks.

East Cork suffered severely. The Defence Forces were called in to help people in Midleton, which was simply impassable, its main street under several feet of water and dozens of premises flooded. Killeagh was flooded a few miles further east, while the Ladysbridge-Cloyne road was a no-go zone, damaged by floodwater.

At the border of Cork and Waterford, the walls were collapsing along one stretch of the N25 by the sea outside Youghal.

This morning, après le déluge, the questions arise, naturally enough.

For instance, Met Éireann issued an orange warning for Cork (“given before expected weather conditions that could significantly impact people, property, and activity in an area”, according to met.ie).

Should that have been a red warning (“rarely issued but when it is, people in the areas expected to be affected should take action to protect themselves and/or their properties”)?

On the basis of their own definitions, a red warning should have been issued for Cork. As reported here, Met Éireann will be issuing fewer Status Yellow weather warnings in future, with the forecaster set to re-evaluate the thresholds for such warnings as it acknowledged concerns about “warning fatigue” from the public.

Unfortunately, that was a little late for Cork this week.

A red warning yesterday morning would have closed schools and immediately cut the number of journeys being made; as it turned out, some schools made the decision to close early anyway, but that meant parents had to make the journey to collect children at the height of the rainstorm.

It’s also clear that people commuted to work in the belief that an orange warning heralded testing but not dangerous weather — only to find conditions far more perilous later in the day.

Another question: Is it acceptable that a 21st-century city should be so seriously affected by heavy rainfall?

One of the traditional replies on Leeside to such queries is to point out that for hundreds of years the low-slung city of Cork, central marshy island and all, has been susceptible to riverine flooding at high tides, a victim of its own geography.

Yet the obvious retort is that if this has been common knowledge for hundreds of years, surely it is past time for a solution. Instead, there have been years of uncertainty and dispute about a proposed flood defence scheme, with no sign of progress while the city is literally inundated.

It should be acknowledged that the amount of rain which fell yesterday was calamitous — by some measures a month’s rainfall fell in approximately 24 hours. That amount of rain would test the best-prepared drainage systems.

Can we say that yesterday was exceptional as well as calamitous, however? Climate change is likely to produce more such events, not fewer.

And if those future events occur on the same scale, as is widely expected, then a different response will be needed.

Multi-agency approach 

A co-ordinated, multi-agency approach involving municipal and State agencies will be necessary if lives are not going to be lost in future extreme weather events.

Are we going to need a Cork rain tsar, a single figure who will take temporary control of the city when it is in danger of being flooded to pull the various agencies together?

Wouldn’t that be better than what we experienced yesterday?

Looking into the future means seeing where other headaches are likely to occur down the line. We have seen in recent years, for instance, that there are ambitious plans for developing and expanding Cork — to create an entirely new suburb, more or less, down on the Docklands-Marina area.

But how meaningful can those plans be if the area itself or adjacent arteries such as the Centre Park and Monahan Roads are likely to flood, as happened yesterday? Or if the entire city can be paralysed by heavy rain?

Ambitions of Cork acting as some kind of regional counterbalance to the concentration of population and resources in Dublin are laudable. However, based on this week, it looks like they won’t survive their first encounter with prolonged rainfall.

Credit must be given to those who defied the elements yesterday to help others. The people who helped neighbours and friends stranded in cars by rising waters. Those who were invited into bars and restaurants for shelter and food, particularly in the Midleton area. 

Sarsfields Hurling Club in Glanmire opened the gates to its main playing field to let flood water run off which would otherwise have flooded local homes and businesses.

The club, which won the Cork senior hurling title just last Sunday, explained their motivation in a statement: “As a result, our main pitch essentially became a flood plain in order to relieve the flooding to the immediate Riverstown area, Orchard Manor, and surrounding businesses. We won a county, lost a pitch, but hopefully saved a part of the Glanmire community.”

Those are the gestures which show what a community really is.

Sars’ actions were proactive and decisive, qualities much in demand yesterday — and not on show everywhere they were needed — but the city as a whole cannot rely on the spontaneous generosity of voluntary organisations. This week’s events must be seen as the turning point.

Cork needs that specific plan with a local focus, preferably managed by an individual with the authority and power to co-ordinate the various bodies involved when the floods threaten again. And to overrule central assumptions on the basis of local evidence, if need be.

If not, then the city can be expected to grind to a halt again when the next rainstorm hits. Or squelch to a halt, to be more accurate.

A co-ordinated multi-agency approach involving municipal and State agencies will be necessary if lives are not going to be lost in future