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Ireland has experienced devastating
floods in recent years which
has affected thousands of people
and caused millions of Euros
worth of damage.
Nowhere in Ireland has remained
untouched by the deluges now part
of our annual weather pattern.
I met with Ray McGrath from the
National Weather Centre to find
out how Ireland is being affected.
Ray have we seen changes in
our weather patterns in recent years?
Well in the case of rainfall it looks
like there has been an increase
in the amount of rainfall that is
falling over Ireland.
And is it more deluges of rain or
what's the pattern?
The heavier rainfall events
have increased in frequency.
Are we seeing changes in our oceans also?
Yes. The most obvious change is
that the temperatures in the
oceans are increasing and this
is leading to more moisture being
pushed into the atmosphere.
That of course means that there is a
greater potential for more extreme weather.
Of course this is more likely to
lead to flooding events.
The east coast is now susceptible to
surge events bringing higher
than usual tides which combine
into perfect storm scenarios such
as what happened in 2002.
The way it works is the surge
actually sucks up the ocean surface
and this in combination with a wind
which may be pumping, pushing the water
towards the coastline this is what
effectively creates the surge conditions.
If this happens to coincide with a
high tide, it obviously worsens it
so you can get a much greater surge
effect affecting the coastline and the
research we have done in Met Éireann it
does indeed suggest that in the future
climate change will bring more intense
surge events to these coastlines.
Being on the frontline is something Dubliners
have known about for a long time.
200 years ago Dublin was a sea port on a
wide estuary surrounded by marshland.
We've a long history of reclaiming land
that was liable for flooding but
back then the big storm was looked on
as a rare event. Not anymore.
The residents of Dublin's East Wall
were badly hit in 2002 and
have been living in fear of
another storm ever since.
Most of it came from the sea
originally to that point but
it was a mixture of canal
and sea water because it
came up the Liffey, up the canal and
of course once the canal level
went too high it overflowed.
It was terrifying for me walking
around in it I have to admit but in
saying that, the elderly people
and to look at their faces, and to
look at their homes devastated
with the dirt five foot up the walls;
it was absolutely horrendous.
We were out of the house for 7 months.
Had to get the builders in: floors,
walls, furniture everything thrown out, rip it all up.
It wasn't just a matter of drying
out stuff, this stuff was destroyed.
Over €6 million has been spent in
the risk area on defences and
early warning systems have been put
in place to give the residents the
highest levels of alert.
There is a number of defences put out there.
There's a monitor out at the Kish
which'll give us advanced warning of
the sea and there's depth warnings
in both of the rivers in the Tolka and
in the Liffey which at least is a help.
At least we will know in advance if
something is going to happen.
Dublin City Council has an
emergency plan coming into force soon.
We have a lot of volunteers
in the area, at the moment we
have the church set up in case of
an emergency that we can bring
people, particularly the elderly.
It's the elderly and the infirm we
need to get out of the area quickly
if we did have another flood.
The changes coming mean rethinking
our strategies for everything: from
river and sea defences, to where we build and
live in the future. Mark Adamson from the OPW
showed me the first line of flood
defences for Ringsend being built on
the Dodder by Dublin City Council.
These are flood protection works that
we are currently building to
protect against tidal flooding,
such as the very severe event that
happened in February 2002 here in Ringsend.
What happened?
Well the sea level came up the river
and spilled over the banks flooding some
areas to a depth of maybe 3 metres
so the wall we are currently leaning on
here is to protect against exactly that kind
of flooding.
So all of these houses here were flooded in 2002?
That's right yes.
So what are they actually doing?
Well over here they're currently
putting in piles and they'll be
building a defence wall to protect
against the high sea levels.
So what sort of work have we got to
do in the future to protect us
against what's coming with flooding?
Well we'll obviously keep building
flood protection schemes such as these
for areas of significant existing risk.
We're also producing flood maps to
identify other areas that are at
risk or that could be at risk if
people were to build in them.
The massive development that has
changed the face of our cities
over the last 10 years hides
what's happening beneath our feet.
Under the millions of tonnes of
concrete, are water courses now
cut off and rivers and streams
we've diverted. Tom Leahy told me
about the Dublin City Council strategies
to future-proof the city.
we've seen some big floods in recent years are we going
to see more floods in Dublin?
Well Duncan, Dublin is located
in the floodplain of 3 major rivers.
200 years ago the land we're standing on
was once under the sea. That's just
one of the challenges we face.
Over the years Dublin has grown.
It's been intensively developed,
houses wherever you see and we've
changed water courses as well.
So each of those poses its own
challenge and hazard which we
have to deal with.
So how are you going to deal
with these sorts of challenges?
Well we have noticed that the
weather patterns have changed
quite significantly. We've also
noticed the phenomenon called
pluvial flooding, now that's a
very technical term, the Dutch
have a much better name they
call it "monster rain".
What it means is very heavy
monsoon-like rainfall
that falls over a short period of
time will overwhelm any drainage
system. So that's a challenge,
one of the challenges we're
going to have to deal with.
Is this the sort of flooding we've
seen in the last couple of years?
Yes, particularly last August and
September that's exactly what
happened to Dublin. We had 3 floods
in 2 months and the intensities were
the sort of recurrence period that
would be one in 150 years.
Dublin City Council's new strategy
is being created and funded in tandem
with European partners who face the
same problems we do.
The Flood Resilient Cities Programme
follows on from the Safer Programme
and looks to deal with the
effects of "monster rain".
Well the sort of things that we can do,
we can look at ways to
control water flow at source,
we've also identified the areas that
might be at risk and logically
they're close to the coast
and then if we know there is
a high risk at a particular time
we can mobilise all the resources of
the State, fire brigade, emergency
services, our own City Council personnel.
We can also link in with householders
because everybody has a part to play
in making their own property that
little bit more flood resilient.
When the next flood comes another
team ready are Commandant John Moriarty's
Civil Defence volunteers.
They'll be on the front line to back
up the fire brigade and I joined them
on one of their drills.
We learned a lot from the floods
back in 2002 where we didn't
have the equipment; people were
going into flooded areas and
contaminated water in fire gear
whereas now we have dry suits to
protect them and so on.
They've been trained by
Dublin Fire Brigade in water awareness;
our boat people obviously are trained
in relation to water and so on.
So there's been a lot of training
has been going on over the
past number of years and we've
also a lot of vehicles, a lot of four
wheel drive vehicles which are
very suitable for the flooding scenarios.
Right guys how's it going there?
There is a way of laying these is
there?
There is a way of laying them yeah.
You bring them close to each
other first is it?
Yes. It's the first line across
and the next ones go in between and
you can see where they cause
the seal here.
And that'll totally seal water?
That'll totally seal and have a
look at the door we went in with a
line then right across the front
of the lower part of the lower
sandbag as well when we were
finished building up.
The fear at the back of my mind is
that we get the combination of
torrential rain with a very high
tide and onshore winds and we get
a combination of coastal flooding
and torrential rain and rivers
overflowing. That's kind of a
nightmare scenario.
Flooding is a problem we all share
throughout Ireland. As an act of
nature it can't be totally avoided,
but we can lessen its worst effects.
As we look for the solutions for
the future we should focus on the
underlying causes of climate change
that we are currently failing
to address.