Time for the Council to cop themselves on

Papa_Lazarou

For how many years have the people of the city been complaining about the drainage probalems of the city and the dire need for a flood protection scheme to be put in place. There is many a buisness and house under two or three feet of water this morning. They might say thy have no money but how much are the road repairs,clean ups,bringing in the tankers for the lost water supply,all the cars that have been pretty much written off? Its time for them to invest in proper infrastructure to preven this happening year in year out.

soden12

What do you suggest ?

Prop the city up on stilts ?

thejuggler

I think the ESB have to accept a lot of the responsibility for the flooding on this occasion. This weather has been forecast for a week or so. If they had been gradually releasing extra water from inniscara dam for the last 7 days they would not have had to release so much yesterday and last night which lead to the extreme flooding in the city.

Lack of planning, forsight and general cop on is to blame here.
Perhaps the ESB workers (average salary €80k per annum) are still celebrating their pay raise earlier this year and were too busy to look at the weather forecast!

Papa_Lazarou

soden12 wrote: »

What do you suggest ?

Prop the city up on stilts ?

Im not an engineer or anything but i know there is penty of ways of fighting this. Firstly getting the drainage system sorted out in the city. They speent millions on it a few years ago which obviously didnt work out very well. There is loads of citys around the world that are much lower than cork and have numerours different things to combat flloding. If i remember correctly after the realy bad flloding a few years ago and independent group put forward suggestions on how they could combat the flooding. The drainage scheme was still being constructed to they pretty much ingnored the suggestions and had the feeling the drainage scheme would prevent further flooding

Stargate

thejuggler wrote: »

I think the ESB have to accept a lot of the responsibility for the flooding on this occasion. This weather has been forecast for a week or so. If they had been gradually releasing extra water from inniscara dam for the last 7 days they would not have had to release so much yesterday and last night which lead to the extreme flooding in the city.

Lack of planning, forsight and general cop on is to blame here.
Perhaps the ESB workers (average salary €80k per annum) are still celebrating their pay raise earlier this year and were too busy to look at the weather forecast!

Isnt more bad weather forecast for the wekend

Padraig Mor

soden12 wrote: »

What do you suggest ?

Prop the city up on stilts ?

[geek]Actually, the original Cork settlements (under city centre) were built partially on wooden poles. [/geek]

scuby

this city will flood, if the river is at high tide, and there is excessive amount of rain water, along with the right wind direction and low pressure over the country. where can the water go if this all hapeens at once ?? answer : no where....
what can we do ?
stilts ?
what will extra drains do, if the water level in the river is too high to take it ?

Note sure when the ESb left the water out of the Dam, if they did not do it to coinside with low tide then they have to accept some responsibility.

parsi

thejuggler wrote: »

I think the ESB have to accept a lot of the responsibility for the flooding on this occasion. This weather has been forecast for a week or so. If they had been gradually releasing extra water from inniscara dam for the last 7 days they would not have had to release so much yesterday and last night which lead to the extreme flooding in the city.

Lack of planning, forsight and general cop on is to blame here.
Perhaps the ESB workers were too busy to look at the weather forecast!

Perhaps the ESB hadn't released water earlier in order to aid the searching of the river for the missing Cork student ?

Perhaps none of us are qualified to know the whys and the wherefores ?

Jay P

There's a proper answer here. I'm pretty sure the ESB knew what they were doing. If flooding could be avoided they would have done all they could.

I heard someone say earlier that it was either let the water off or see the dam burst, which would not have worked out well at all.

Plasmoid

I am very annoyed.

An email was sent around to UCC students that the Inniscarra dam was going to be doing a big release and to expect flooding.

Why was no one but UCC students warned? The information was gathered from the Buildings and Estates Office who were worried about the new WGB building (and rightfully so, its ruined now)

I've heard that the dam has been holding back water recently to aid divers searching for a missing student. If so, fair enough.

Regardless though... they released a heck of a lot of water and flooding was predicted. But for the fact that i got texts from friends i would have been asleep when it hit. Instead i spent the night racing around waking my neighbours in their basements who were asleep and have lost most of their stuff. We got no help and we had to haul what little we could upstairs before the water got too high.There was no warning.

The army, gardai, civil defense, fire brigade and ambulance service were up and down all night. They didnt stop to alert anyone to any danger, that was up to your neighours.

Why couldn't anyone have alerted any of these people they were about to be swamped by floods? The RTE 9 o clock news went live to cork city... and everything was grand it seemed. No announcements in the streets or anything.

Surely the City Council bears blame for the lack of warning?

nacl

Jay P wrote: »

There's a proper answer here. I'm pretty sure the ESB knew what they were doing. If flooding could be avoided they would have done all they could.

I heard someone say earlier that it was either let the water off or see the dam burst, which would not have worked out well at all.

The linked post claims that it was unavoidable cos of a combination of low atmospheric pressure (allows sealevel to rise so tidal flow into Lee is higher), heavy rainfall and southerly winds ('holding' water that would otherwise flow out of the harbour to the sea)

There is nothing wildly unusual about those three things happening together here. It occurs at least every few years.

So what happened differently this time?

moceri

This is what Happened Differently:

shoegirl

In all honesty, how is it still considered ok to supply almost half a city from just one pumping station that is nearly 50 years old? I'm living here over 7 years and floods are regular in a number of parts of the city, yet some of these areas are heavily developed with apartments, shops etc? The Lee Fields regularly floods, as did the area around the School of Commerce for a long time.

Not just Cork city but the situation in Mallow (until now) and Fermoy was completely insane - real problems with flooding yet again, extensive developments in both towns, some of it band in the middle of the flood plains! The councils ARE accountable since there are responsible for planning and rezoning decisions. Just look at the whole area around the Owenacurra river on the Ballinacurra side of Midleton there is a chronic flood disaster just waiting to happen - hundreds of apartments within a few feet of a river. Did flood once, about 5 or 6 years ago, yet the building and inappropriate overdevelopment continued - why?

Another place is the eastern side of Carrigtohill - bang in the middle of a flood plain is a large chunk of the newer developments.
I think there is a huge question there for the culpability of polticians who propose and second rezonings in known flood plains, often ignoring the advice of their own planners. I think they do need to be held to account. And not just in Cork either - most of the worst planning is in the commuter counties around Dublin, especially in the midlands etc.

shnaek

shoegirl wrote: »

In all honesty, how is it still considered ok to supply almost half a city from just one pumping station that is nearly 50 years old? I'm living here over 7 years and floods are regular in a number of parts of the city, yet some of these areas are heavily developed with apartments, shops etc? The Lee Fields regularly floods, as did the area around the School of Commerce for a long time.

Not just Cork city but the situation in Mallow (until now) and Fermoy was completely insane - real problems with flooding yet again, extensive developments in both towns, some of it band in the middle of the flood plains! The councils ARE accountable since there are responsible for planning and rezoning decisions. Just look at the whole area around the Owenacurra river on the Ballinacurra side of Midleton there is a chronic flood disaster just waiting to happen - hundreds of apartments within a few feet of a river. Did flood once, about 5 or 6 years ago, yet the building and inappropriate overdevelopment continued - why?

Another place is the eastern side of Carrigtohill - bang in the middle of a flood plain is a large chunk of the newer developments.
I think there is a huge question there for the culpability of polticians who propose and second rezonings in known flood plains, often ignoring the advice of their own planners. I think they do need to be held to account. And not just in Cork either - most of the worst planning is in the commuter counties around Dublin, especially in the midlands etc.

+1

munstercork

I doubt if the flooding would have been as bad as it was if the esb had released water when a mid tide was in. Cork main drainage is well capable of stopping flooding when high tides are about, but not when you add a high tide and a water release from the dam. Esb must be held at fault here.

Irish and Proud

soden12 wrote: »

What do you suggest ?

Prop the city up on stilts ?

...well as the 21st century progresses, this is exactly what towns and cities may have to do if we are to have significant rainfall increases due to climate change. This could be an opportunity to solve not only flooding problems, but also transport problems - just imagine an Irish town/city post 2050 - you sit in the street as you do today, but it's mainly dominated by pedestrians, trams and cyclists - why, because the cars, trains and buses (on cleaner energy BTW) are generally located on the sub layer - a layer that would normally be for transport and storage, but could be let flood in emergencies - storage areas would obviously be in sealed compartments. Naturally, the aftermath clean-up would be quick, and there would be little waste as people's homes would be well out of harms way. Of course, the sub-structure would be made to take the water flow, so no roads would require resurfacing etc in the aftermath.

However, I haven't really thought this through fully, but I posted this concept in order to explore future possiblities in relation to Ireland.

Regards!