⚠️ Storm Éowyn - Fri 24.01.25 (**Please read Mod Instruction in OP.**)

Prime example of the condescending I'm alright jack attitude on display.

Yes my phone and signal are working now thankfully. But there are elderly and vulnerable people in the west and other rural areas who have had no power or water since last week. Have you any idea how they are coping??

But you go ahead and point score safe in the knowledge you aren't affected.

Have to add, I've never seen so much anger regarding the response received in the aftermath of this storm.

A lot of eyes opening to the divide between the west & other rural areas of Ireland and Dublin.

There is a growing resentment to the treatment people have received at their lowest ebb. Some of the condescending smug responses here and on other forums are only serving to strengthen that divide.

I don't see this anger dissipating for a very long time.

rural areas always going to be worse hit than cities. Thats common sense. Most country people wouldn’t swap it for the city and very much vica versa

Power just returned to my part of north Longford. No major structural damage done around here, the problem was a good few trees in a local forest snagged lines as they fell.

Or more likely you are in an echo chamber

Anyone thinking this storm aftermath is some kind of divide between urban vs. rural, east vs. west, "the Pale" vs. everywhere else need to cop the fúck on. I completely understand the anger and resentment at the lack of resources for so many areas, but it's really pathetic trying to make into some kind of tribal us against them shíte, it's really not like that. Some posters are trolls, some are over-reactive, some are just assholes, some are very sensitive, some are very factual, some are just mashing buttons/keys and pressing post.

People may see it as an urban/rural divide or a Dublin Vs everywhere else divide and that may make them feel better but it's not the case. The storm wasn't as bad in the east and urban areas have largely undergrounded their power so the Dublin region wasn't as impacted.

What has actually happened is that despite having an emergency coordination group, they failed to prepare for a storm of this severity and scale. ESB were caught not keeping lines clear, Irish Water were shown up for their complete dependence on ESB and not having close to sufficient contingency in place, the Comms networks were found to have only limited backup power and no functioning disaster plan and the councils had no plan for any other response aside from getting downed trees off roads.

It has also to be said many households had no plan either and no contingency for any power loss.

While the response has been wholly inadequate, there is not much that can be done now apart from preparing better for the next one. While power outages are disruptive, it is possible to cope for a few days. What makes life very hard is no access to water and sanitation. Irish water must, first of all let people know where their water comes from. If you tell them X plant is down and supplies will run out, you need to know if that supplies your home. They must also put in place a proper plan that prevents the collapse of the distribution network under any circumstances. Water is absolutely vital. If every site and pump has to have a gennie so be it.

Councils must also step up and have a plan for opening welfare hubs for people to wash. The current thoughtless cobbled together effort is an insult. Some hubs don't even have water, some are libraries. I mean wtf?

It's hard to not see it as a 'rural vs urban' divide. If 142,000 people in Dublin (as of this writing) or Cork city (the Taoiseach's home county) were without power or water tonight, we would never hear the end of it. It would be all over the papers, all over the news. 24 hour rolling broadcast telling us when folks in Cities were going to get their power back. If the government had the slightest inclination that Dublin or Cork would be worst affected, The EU would have been contacted as a 'precaution'. No way would they wait three days before contacting other countries for help.

Instead, the storm is 'yesterday's news' in many outlets. Pushed to the back pages in others. An inconvenience to people outside of Dublin or Cork City.

When Drumcondra got flooded in 2002, Bertie Ahern was out there in the wellies, standing in the flood waters, picture perfect photo opportunity. It was almost seen as the greatest tragedy since the Famine. Some would have thought Bono was gonna write a song for the people of Drumcondra who couldn't go home. It was all over the TV, all over the radios. Covered extensively in print media.

This storm came on the backs of another storm a mere month ago, Storm Darragh, where many houses were flooded out due to a low level warning that turned serious overnight. Four feet of water in some houses, and then Eowyn follows on a couple of weeks later. It was the communities that seemed to help each other out, very few officials stepped in.

Under Leo's term we were being warned about 'frequent blackouts' due to the energy grid being under strain from shutting down solid fuel power stations and Data Centers. A county wide blackout happens, where even water stations lost power, and conserve water notices had to be issued because mains supply water was steadily running out, and sweet flip all was done until the last minute, and that was people power more than anything.

This should be on the front of every newspaper, every news outlet, and condemning the government's farcical response to two major weather events, despite heavy warnings this was coming. There is palpable anger there. I saw someone confronting Micheal Martin due to the lack of response. There was more preparation for Ophelia than Eowyn.

This was a storm for the ages, worse than anything in up to 60 years. It's awful and horrible that, a few days after it hit the country on Friday, people are still without power and infrastructure is unable to function normally due also to power losses. And it's pure hardship for some people to hear that they may have to wait another week or more before they get power back at home. Farms and commercial premises who hadn't done enough preparation by having backup emergency electricity generation and local water supplies will also be very hard hit, and we need to have emergency responses focus on helping such people and situations as a matter of urgency.

However, there is an undue level of whining and unrealistic expectations being trotted out from some quarters. The crisis is still unfolding. ESB lads are flat out trying to restore power. The extent of the damage is undoubtedly putting huge pressure on stocks of spares, and re-supply will be needed. Crews coming in from other countries to help the restoration is extremely welcome, but a certain ramping up lead time was inevitable. Similarly the offers of generators to power Uisce Éireann infrastructure are materialising on the ground and they'll need installation and connection.

In the meantime, hubs have opened around the country in GAA centres etc., where locals can get some heat, hot water, charge devices etc. Volunteer effort in these centres is amazing. In each community, particularly vulnerable people such as elderly and people with medical equipment needs, electric wheelchairs, hoists and other mobility aids all need to be identified and helped on a community by community level.

This was a storm event that approached hurricane levels seen in the USA South East in Autumn 2024. There are still people in Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky who are living on the brink with their communities trashed, and are still weeks/months away from anything approaching 'normality'! It took rescue and recovery efforts many days to even begin to respond to their disaster and it's still ongoing. We're less than a week into this crisis, and our ESB lads have restored over half a million, or almost 70% of those initially impacted already. For a 'storm of the century' event, this effort has been nothing short of heroic. We really need to see the recovery efforts that have already taken place and are still ongoing as a mark of our ability to recover from our version of a Category x hurricane event.

And when the restoration of power and water is done, and repairs to damaged buildings and properties effected, we need to ask ourselves a simple question. If this 'one in a century' event becomes a one in a decade, or a 2 in a year event, as appears to becoming ever more likely, is our infrastructure capable of coping? Hard questions around the resilience of the ESB transmission/ distribution lines around the country need to be asked and answered. Power supply policies around using generators, battery packs, EVs etc to power homes on an emergency basis need to be agreed and supported by public policy initiatives. Contingency plans for sheltering people impacted by future such events need to be developed, and risk registers of vulnerable persons of all stripes built up on a community by community basis. In other words, we need to prepare for worse to come, if the climate change worst case scenarios materialise.

Fail to Prepare = Prepare to Fail...

What are raving on about. The ESB has won awards. The key word in the article is real time notification.

https://esb.ie/media-centre-news/press-releases/article/2018/03/08/esb-networks-awarded-two-prestigious-world-tech-awards

You're spot on with the "cobbled-together insult" of the hubs. "come to a hub for food and a charging point for a phone". For a phone that's no use to you?!!! At least it does serve a purpose as a torch I suppose.

Theres two types of govt response needed; 1. The short term emergency response and 2. Infrastructure improvements and contingency planning for future events.

You've outlined really well what's needed for response 2, but given the shambles of an effort at the emergency response, I sincerely doubt they have the capacity or interest to work on #2.

They should have booked out local hotels with power and made available to elderly without power, distributed generators and gas heaters to other priority cases. What in the name of God is the Emergency Coordination Group doing if they can't organise services as basic as that?

98 unread posts since I lost my internet! Only got power back last night.

I'm not going to say anything I'm sure has already been said BUT I think the mobile phone companies have a lot to answer for.

For many people, the elderly ect., it's their ONLY form of connection, even at the best of times.

For me, not having any form of communication for 5.5 days was an inconvenience. For many, it's a good deal worse than that. Having a mobile is NOT a luxury anymore, it's a necessity.

Day 6. No power or mobile reception still. Drove 11 miles to get mobile reception. I think the loss of Comms was the worst aspect of all this. People did not know what was happening or where to go for some power, mobile reception or petrol/diesel. We didn't even know which roads were open. Spotted ESB crews for first time so hopefully today. They must be exhausted.

Could do with some milder weather because houses are cold at night.

The short video on this Irish times story is worth watching. Roof was only 15 years old. Thank goodness the owner stayed elsewhere that night. Very tough.

Storm Éowyn: More than 140,000 customers still without electricity, ESB says

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/01/29/storm-eowyn-more-than-140000-customers-still-without-electricity-esb-says/

Do you honestly think 3000 poles and 900 km of wire could be got in a matter of days?

Another "outrage" post that makes no sense.

It is increasingly clear that the "once in 60 year storm" narrative is just not the case. The record gust was recorded at a station not in use prior to 2000 and one that consistently records the highest gusts during storm events since it opened. It would likely have had gusts as high in previous storms

For other weather stations gusts were comparable with the fiercest storms of the 90's. But there was not the same level of power outages in the 90's events. Extreme yes, but not unprecedented in recent times

So while undoubtedly this storm would have presented massive challenges no matter how well the network was looked after, a number of factors have made it worse.

• Throughout many parts of the country a forestry scheme though the 80's and 90's planted large amounts of land with evergreen plantations. The clearance left around the power supply going through these areas was great for saplings or the odd branch. When a 30 year old tree comes down though it takes out the supply. Coilte and ESB networks have questions to answer here as to how these were initially planned and subsequently managed. And its not just in this storm. Large scale outages as a result of storms have definitely increased as these plantations have matured
• Road sides and hedgerows has seen a massive increase in coverage in recent years as a lot of land is far less intensively farmed. Not enough has been done to manage these around critical infrastructure.
• Maintenance of poles seems to be an issue. Some of the obvious rot on fallen poles indicates there is no substantial programme of inspect and replace
• Irish water's strategy for dealing with power outages appears to be hope for the best and depend on the ESB
• The Mobile operators websites are a disgrace during this, log on to Vodafone or Eir and there is no information on the network outages, just sell sell sell. Eir at least have a cover note but no substantial information. There should be a legal requirement on suppliers of utilities to keep customers updated. Same with broadband providers
• There exists no apparent system for a coordinated response to a major event.

I am lucky, I did not lose power, internet or mobile service. Lost water for about 12 hours. I feel like one of the few people in County Galway in this situation. Others are rightfully angry

And how should they answer? Phone masts and antenna knocked down all over the country

Can't exactly put an antenna underground.

The reason given for most of the mobile network outages is power and/or connectivity issues, not physical damage.

Both of which equate to physical damage. Someone I know has a pole down at her house and has connectivity issues due to it.

Thhose crews will be getting extremely well paid for their shifts.

Ah the moneytree theory

Since you're so outraged I suggest you go out and find an elderly person in a home without power and pay for Their hotel accommodation. Let's know how you get on.

This is what needs to be done for future events.

The "hubs" are predominately voluntary organisations/buildings that are specificilly for another purpose that just opened - nothing more than that - as you've outlined without these good people there wouldn't be hubs instead of having a plan in place prior to these events around services available, contact details, and a bit of organisation.

Many houses will, after this, be better setup for future events and you'd hope that all groups involved would learn some lessons.

So a country with a budget surplus forecast at $9billion this year cannot afford to sped a bit on disaster management?

And even if there wasn't massive budget surplus, spending ondisaster recovery is always a worthwhile investment, both morally and economically

Following the 2010 ice and snow, local authorities got their act together to ensure salt and gritting supplies would be better stocked and better planning for snow-ice events was implemented. This was during a recession, the money was still found and spent wisely. Subsequent snow-ice events were much better managed.

That 2010 event was the catapult for creating the Emergency Management Group which now seems to just be a waffling shop. There are alot of very, very highly paid people sitting at these meetings and they cannot seem to get any sort of plan together.

The country is crying out for an advance flood warning system as far back as the soaking wet winter of 2015. Nothing is implemented a whole decade later with promises that 'something is in the pipeline' and it could be 2027 or beyond. That is a joke.

The trouble in this country is too many committees etc… with people just interested in offering opinions on why this cannot be done and why that cannot be done and commanding serious sums on money for solving very little. There is no focus on solving problems because most of these people sitting around a table will not be 'told what to do' as they hold an attitude that 'I'm paid €250,000 per year and you won't dictate to me how to run my department.

Sorry for dragging this off topic, I was barely affected by the storm - however if I were in Galway or other areas badly affected I'd be as angry as hell.

The contention that this is was a once in 60/80 year event does not stand up to scrutiny. Credit to @sryanbruen for the below table comparing this to previous storms. Unfortunately we do not have comparable data for Mace head, but looking at the sites where we do, Eowyn was not a once in a century event as some are claiming. My eye is particularly drawn to Claremorris below. There were multiple storms in the 90's with worse conditions in the area, but none with the level of impact to utilities