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You are > Home > Christmas brings little cheer for landslide families
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Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Christmas brings little cheer for landslide families
By: Orla Hearns
The landslides that devastated the Pullathomas/ Glengad area of Erris in September rank among the worst natural disasters ever to befall a west of Ireland community. Orla Hearns visited the area on the eve of Christmas and discovered how local families have been coping since the disaster.
On September 19 last the majestic hillsides of the Pullathomas area disintegrated and avalanched into Broadhaven Bay.
Not only did the unprecedented natural disaster physically mar the beautiful landscape of the area, it changed the lives of the communities affected by the damages and losses incurred.
The people of these communities – Inver, Glengad, Pullathomas, Barrnacoille – are renowned for their pride in the area. Now the land itself seems to have turned on them. Their panoramic splendour is overshadowed by their deadly location.
Instead of being identified by address they have had to get accustomed to references to risk zones – high, medium or low chances of landslide recurrence.
Every day they live with the view of small flags on the hilltops above their houses. These markers highlight tracts of earth which could rip away from the rock beneath and career towards their homes at any minute.
Three months after that fateful night when a freak rain storm forced the dry hill slopes to crack and cascade down to the sea, the ‘Western People’ visited Pullathomas and spoke to some of the residents.
The rest of the county was busily preparing for Christmas but the festive period held little relevance or promise for those we spoke to.
They are tired of reporters and television cameras. They are tired of relaying their experiences of September 19. They feel displaced. Some use the word “limbo” to describe their existence since the landslides. Even more disillusioning has been the disappointing level of response from the Government.
News has since broken that the Department of Environment and Local Government will provide local authorities with additional funding. It is anticipated that the extra monies allocated to Mayo Co Council will be sufficient to carry out the protection works that have been recommended to help prevent a recurrence of the landslides.
This provides a small source of comfort for the landslide victims this Christmas. But all the money in the world cannot replace a condemned home with all of its memories or restore the confidence and sense of security of someone who literally witnessed the earth opening beneath their feet. This funding does and should not end the issue.
A home in the high risk zone
Tears spring uncontrollably to Mary McBride’s eyes as soon as conversation turns to the landslides of September 19 last.
Mary and some of her family were caught up in the freak rain storm and the horrific deluge of hillside that resulted that night.
Trapped in a car for more than three hours, she and her family watched helplessly as the spectacular landscape where she was born and bred was swept out to sea in a matter of a few dark and terrifying hours.
The McBrides have been put out of their home as a result. But having endured weeks in unsuitable and cramped temporary accommodation, they have opted to return to their homeplace, which has now been classified a high risk zone.
The only thing they can be assured of now is that nothing is certain anymore. They are living in a limbo. No one can say what will become of their home and they have nowhere else to go.
“Well, there’s not many looking forward to Christmas here I can tell you,” Mary says.
It has proved impossible to resume everyday living: “I have not done a thing for Christmas. I’m just dreading the thought of it. When you look around you there just does not seem to be any point to putting up decorations.”
Mary recalls how it had started to rain lightly when she left her home with her daughter and son-in-law to go to the local bar on the night of September 19.
“Then the heavens opened and there were floods everywhere. I have never seen anything like it before,” she said.
“Unless you were there yourself you could not imagine how bad it was. We were trapped in the car and we could see the rescue people coming for us but they could not get over the bridge.
“All we were afraid of was that we were going to slide into the sea. And there was this terrible noise all the time. It was unreal.”
It took over three hours for rescue teams to reach Mary and her family in the car. They were taken to a neighbouring house.
“I didn’t sleep much that night and I have not slept many nights since,” Mary said. “It is usually morning before I get to sleep. It’s not so much that I am frightened but it is on my mind all the time.”
Mary has not spent a night in her own family home since the landslides. She couldn’t even if she wanted to. Her home is at one of the highest points on the hillside and is classified as being at high risk of further landslide.
The McBride home is in a magnificent setting but the majestic summit above it has become a terrifying vista for the family.
Tonnes of earth ripped away from the hillside on either side of their house and avalanched down to the sea in September. The mountainside immediately above the McGrath house is still intact but you can see the markers that have been put in place to identify huge faults and cracks in the earth which could give way at any time.
The McBrides were placed in a B&B for two weeks after the landslide. Then they rented a two bedroom flat for several weeks. But the strain eventually became too much for them. Everyday they had to travel over and back to their home to fetch clothes and supplies.
And with no word of acceptable alternative accommodation they took the difficult decision some weeks ago to go home to the high risk zone.
One of Mary’s daughters was too frightened to return to the house with the rest of the family. She has rented a flat in Inver instead.
For now, Mary spends her days in her house. She stays with her married daughter at night. And this is how life will be for the indefinite future.
“We are in a limbo. This is shadowing are lives. We have not even been told yet whether the hill can be made safe.”
But where else can they go? Their property is a dead loss to them. Who would buy it? And with no assurances on financial assistance how can they even start to contemplate investing in a new home?
It is proposed to put kinetic fencing in place on the hillside to prevent anymore land sliding away. But Mary has little faith in the efficacy of that proposal. She thinks the mountain is too steep:
“You only have to go up the radar station road and look down the mountain side. There’s a piece of land bigger than my sitting room that is just ready to slide away any minute.”
The McBrides, like all of the other families affected by the landslides, have received their share of the E300,000 humanitarian aid allocated to the area. But Mary says the question of funding is immaterial to her.
“It does not do any good. There are people whose buildings have been damaged but what they have been given is not enough,” she says.
As well as living in the physical shadow of another potentially lethal landslide the local residents have also had to endure the curiosity of the rest of the nation. The phenomenal events of September 19 shone a media spotlight on the community.
“Every time we meet someone they ask us about the landslide. We know they are concerned. But we have heard so much about it and we see so much about it on the television. After a while you just want to get away from it,” Mary says.
But there is nowhere to go to: “Glengad used to be a beautiful area. Last summer people were mad to buy sites here and build houses but that has all gone now.
“I would like to see my children settling down in this area. We came back from England to live here. But I cannot see the rest of them setting up home here now. Even I feel like just packing up and leaving now. But we just have to wait on in this limbo.”
A nightmare come true
The night of the landslides represented the realisation of one of Sheila Sheerin’s worst nightmares.
She and her husband Gerry moved to Glengad 15 years ago and built a home at the foot of the mountain. Sheila would often gaze up at the towering hillside and remark on how steep it was.
“I used to say, ‘I hope that hill doesn’t come down’. Gerry would tell me not to be silly. And after about three years I began to believe him.”
But the mountain did come down, destroying fields, fencing and fodder on the Sheerin’s farm and rendering their newly built “investment” house a white elephant.
At this stage, they have done all they can do themselves to clear their lands and homes and salvage their farming business. But they’re just not physically or financially capable of doing much more. So they too are reduced to a “waiting game” as they lobby the Department of Agriculture to come on board and offer assistance.
“What we got in humanitarian aid from the Red Cross would not pay to clear up the field behind our house,” Gerry said. “It will be a quiet Christmas this year for sure.”
Sheila said: “It depresses us looking out on the mess every day. It’s not half as bad out there now as it was. But you just have to walk away from the window after a while.”
She vividly remembers the events of September 19. What started as a light shower grew so heavy that she and her daughter began to fear that the roof would cave in.
Then the electricity went out. That’s when Sheila noticed a number of cars backed up on the road outside and knew something was wrong.
The electricity returned and Sheila cautiously looked outside. She saw what she thought was turf that had been dragged from the back of the house. But there was a lot of grass in it too.
There was muck up to the level of her back door and outside it looked as though someone had ploughed up the field behind her home.
Gerry was in the neighbouring village of Barnacoille that night, visiting 98 year old Margaret Lannan. The noise of the rain concerned him and when he looked outside he saw floods of water and big lumps of mud coursing down the hill.
Many people will remember Gerry from media reports at the time of the landslide. He had to make his way across the moving earth to a neighbour’s house to ring for help. He and that neighbour, Pat Meneghan, stayed with Mrs Lanan until the rescue team reached her and carried her to safety on stretcher the following morning.
That was September. The Sheerins and their four children only moved back into their family home four weeks ago. They had to split up at times and were accommodated in four different places in the intervening period. It has been a horrible time of uncertainty.
“We tried to bring so much stuff with us because we just did not know whether the house would be there when we got back,” they said.
The Sheerin’s home is now classified as being at medium risk of a recurring landslide. But they have a second house. One which they built themselves further up the hillside from their home - an investment for their children’s future.
“We got a mortgage and built the house bit by bit. We thought that the kids could have it in the future. Now it’s just sitting there. We are paying a mortgage on it every month but we don’t know what to do with it now.”
The new house was almost covered over by the debris of the landslide. Gerry has managed to move the muck with machinery. The building appears to be structurally intact. But the neighbouring house was totally wiped out in the landslide. It doesn’t make for the prettiest of views for anyone who might even contemplate buying the Sheerin’s newly built property.
“This village was booming last summer. Everyone wanted to have a house in Glengad. I don’t think you could give a site away today,” Sheila said.
The Sheerins say it was a good thing that the landslide took place at night and during a power cut. If people could have seen what was really happening there would have been widescale panic and a greater risk of fatalities.
For Gerry and Sheila the immediate priority is to try to salvage their land. Gerry has already had to sell off some of his sheep to combat the expense of the landslide damages. His winter fodder and much of his fencing were destroyed too in the deluge of September 19.
The Sheerins feel the Department of Agriculture will have to come on board and offer some assistance to the devastated farming community of Glengad to help them resume their source of income.
Sheila said: “We’re not asking for a fortune. We just want enough money to help us get back to the way we were before the landslide.”
But they fear that the issue and the crisis is fading in the minds of the Government.
“Within two weeks we had three Government Ministers come down here to visit us. They assured us that we would get help. Now whenever you try to contact someone in a Department you get no reply.”
*Gerry and Sheila wish to record their gratitude to the neighbours and friends who helped them clear the landslide debris from their home in the days after September 19.
“I’m in prison”
At 98 years of age Margaret Lannon is one of the most senior members of the Pullathomas community.
She has lived a tough, hard working life. And now, when she should be able to rest and enjoy her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, she finds herself doing battle again.
She has not been allowed to return to her home since September 19. She is disgusted at that and vows that she will go back, if she has to walk back up to Barnacoille herself.
Margaret was another personality who stood out in the media coverage of September 19 last.
Rescuers could not get to her hilltop home at Barrnacoille. Luckily she had the company and assistance of neighbours, Gerry Sheerin and Paddy Meneghan during that long dark night.
But it was almost midday before she could be stretchered to safety across the devastated fields and roads and along the shore line of Glengad.
Like most people of her vintage, home is definitely where the heart is for Margaret.
Her house on the hillside at Barrnacoille has been her home for 70 years. She has not been able to return there since the landslides as it is not deemed safe.
Margaret has been housed in a nice modern Council house, not far from Barrnacoille. It’s warm, it has everything she needs but she hates it. This is where she will spend Christmas and she is broken hearted at the thought of it.
“I have lived in that house for 70 years. I’m out of it four months now. That is disgraceful,” she said. “I’m not satisfied to be out of it for Christmas but I will have to stay here.”
Feisty and brutally frank, Margaret is determined to get back in to her house. Her daughter, Mary, knows that her mother would walk the steep mountain slope to Barrnacoille to get back in if that is what it takes.
Margaret says: “I want to go home and I will not go out of that house again until I’m brought out of it in a box.”
For Margaret, who has basked in the panoramic splendor of her hilltop home for a lifetime, the small Council development where she has been accommodated is a veritable prison.
She won’t look out of her kitchen window because she fears her neighbours will think she is staring in at them.
For 70 years she has enjoyed the most spectacular coastal views in the West of Ireland from her own home. So she is understandably dismissive of the dismal gorse and whin bushes on view outside the living room window of her Council house.
Her daughter, Mary, is torn between Margaret’s unhappiness at being out of her home and the advice of the safety experts and authorities who say it is not safe for her to return.
“I would be happy to see her go back home for her own peace of mind,” she says.
Margaret cannot understand the authority’s safety fears in respect of Barrnacoille.
“Why would I be frightened?” she asks. “I have lived there for years on my own. I had great neighbours up there. I do not care about the slides. That mountain will not move again. If they would just put the lights back on in my house I would go up there on my own. I’m in prison here.”
No room for a Christmas tree
Baby Rebecca Meneghan will always stand out among her peers in her home place of Pullathomas. She was just a few days old when she and her parents were caught up in the terrifying landslides of September 19 last.
Her grandmother, Mary Meneghan, has kept a scrapbook for her of all the media reports at the time. No doubt Rebecca will delight in having the unbelievable events relayed to her as she grows.
Thankfully, for now, she is blissfully unaware, of the devastating changes the event has brought to the lives of her parents and her extended family.
This is Rebecca’s first Christmas. It should be a magical time for her parents. But Nicola admits that she is finding it hard to get into the Christmas spirit. She was devastated and traumatised in the aftermath of the Pullathomas landslide. Now she is fed up.
She, her fiancée, William, and his mother, Mary, have been left homeless as a result of the landslide. They had been living in the Meneghan family home at Barrnacoille. But that house has been condemned due to the damages incurred on September 19.
Now they find themselves in a small rented house in Gortmeer with no indication of when or if they will every be provided with or assisted in finding a replacement home.
Nicola points out that they don’t even have enough space in the house to put up a tree for Rebecca’s first Christmas.
The destruction of the Meneghan family home has been distressing enough for first-time parents, Nicola and William. But the impact of the event has been all the more severe for them because they were physically caught up in the landslide.
On the night of September 19 Nicola and William had been showing off their first-born to some relatives and were driving back to Barrnacoille when the drama began.
“Rebecca slept right through it,” Nicolas smiles. “The water was just gushing down the road.”
William somehow managed to keep his cool and retain control of their car. But Nicola, who was just recovering from the trauma of childbirth, was terrified. William has no doubt that they would have been swept out to sea that night had they been in a lighter model car.
With a beautiful, healthy baby girl to raise and plans to marry, the couple had an exciting future ahead. But everything came to a grinding halt when the hillsides of Glengad came down. They didn’t know it at the time but they would never be able to “go home” again.
The Meneghan homestead had been the family “base” for more than 50 years. It was the place where all of the siblings and extended family gathered. Now it’s all gone. Fifty years of living and memories will eventually have to be raised to the ground.
Their rented house in Gortmeer is far from suitable for their needs and they are beginning to despair of ever finding a home.
“The house in Barrnacoille was condemned several weeks ago. I honestly thought that the Council would have sorted us out with a house by now,” Nicola said.
Mary Meneghan has asked the local authority about getting assistance to buy a new house. So far, her request has not been entertained.
Nicola and the Meneghan’s find it difficult to understand why more has not been done for them. They can recall the flooding disaster in Gort some years ago. People put out of their homes as a result of that incident were provided with new houses.
“There has been nothing like that for us here so far,” Nicola said.
As for the future, she and William will pursue their plans as best they can. Nicola hopes to be able to go to college and the couple also have their wedding to look forward to.
It’s admirable to hear such optimism, especially when Nicola confides that she is certain that there will be more landslides in Pullathomas in the future.
“I am positive that it will happen again,” she says.
She is not impressed with the proposed protective works for the landslide area.
“The Council are telling people that they are safe enough. They have gone to homes in the high risk areas. They have dug drains there and then they say they are now only medium risk.”
But Christmas has arrived and Nicola is doing her best to get on with things:
“I am OK now,” she says. “But I really was in bits after the landslide. Every time I thought about what happened I would cry.
“It just seems that as soon as something good happened to us with the birth of Rebecca, everything else went wrong. Now I’m just getting fed up of the whole situation.”
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