'I spent hours mopping my home after last week's floods, now I'm terrified it will happen again'
Residents already devastated by floods are terrified of waking up again to rafts of water as more rain warnings have been issued today.A Status Orange Rain Warning is in place for Wicklow and Wexford for 24 hours, starting from 3am this morning. And Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Louth, Wexford, Monaghan and Tipperary have been issued a Yellow Rain Warning for the same 24 hours.Met Éireann fears that “spells of heavy rain on already saturated ground combined with high river levels and high tides” will lead to localised flooding, river flooding, and difficult travelling conditions. Caroline Walsh, who lives in the Woodside Estate, Rathfarnham, was devastated by flooding in her South Dublin home on Tuesday.Residents of the neighbourhood were shocked to see a river flowing down their road, destroying their homes and cars. Caroline, who is a carer for dementia patients, said she is terrified that she will wake up to a similar situation she faced last week.She told the Irish Mirror: “I am worried. I have been told that it is going to be really bad again. I will be putting my car up on the hill and we have sandbags in front of the door.“When I looked out my bedroom window (Tuesday) morning the drain was full of dirt and blocked, my car was sitting in a pond. I couldn’t go out the front door, I couldn’t go outside. I looked out and saw it was unbelievable, it was running down the street like a river.“I got an old single mattress and popped it up by the door, got all the towels I could and a mop and bucket and I just kept mopping until 11 o’clock when it subsided. From 6.30 to 11 I was emptying buckets of water that I was mopping up."If I wasn’t here and went to work early I’d have come home to a deluge. We couldn’t open the back door, we couldn’t open the front door, how are we going to get out? There was nothing we could do, we couldn’t go out.“As much as I love a day off I didn’t think it would be spent mopping floors for a couple of hours!” The floors in Caroline’s hall have been ripped out due to damage, and while her car is still running, she fears it doesn’t have much time left.As the car is 20 years old, her insurer told her there was no point claiming for it. She continued: “How it’s still going is beyond me, but it’s going. My biggest worry is my mechanic said that in two or three weeks time rust can set in, the erosion can set in.”Local Sinn Féin Councillor Roisin Mannion said residents are “terrified” that more misery is to come. Many in the area have had to flee their homes due to the damage from last week, and further devastation will lead to even higher costs of repairs.But Roisin said it's a real possibility this will happen, adding: “We have a yellow weather warning until Friday, and we had a yellow weather warning last week when all of this happened." The Councillor said residents with pets are also struggling, as some don’t have anywhere to leave them.She said: “There is one lady who is staying in her property, she shouldn’t be there, the place smells, the water is coming up under the radiators, but she is staying there because she has nowhere to put her two cats and dog.”The National Emergency Co-ordination Group (NECG) warned yesterday that the country is entering “another challenging phase over Thursday and Friday”. It has said that due to heavy rainfall over the past week, areas that have not already been affected could see flooding.A spokesperson said: “Significant rainfall is expected in areas already affected by flooding over the last period. The NECG has emphasised that, due to river flows, heavy rain in one county can impact on flood-prone areas in another even where less significant rain has fallen due to river flows.”It said local authorities and response agencies were briefed on the situation yesterday and have been deploying and replenishing sandbags, clearing drains and carrying out other flood prevention works.Last month was the wettest January since 2018, according to Met Éireann’s latest climate statistics. Rainfall in Ireland was 123% above the long-term average for the month. However, Dublin recorded its second wettest January on record, with 225% above its long-term average.Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: Sign up here.
