27,000 without power after Isha hits
ESB crews working on broken power lines on the Ballinlough Road, Cork as Storm Isha hits the south of the country. Picture: Dan Linehan
More than 27,000 homes and businesses were without power in Mayo yesterday morning after Storm Isha made her presence felt on Sunday evening.
The storm was one of the most severe to hit the West in recent years and caused a lot of damage to buildings and other structures. The strongest gust recorded overnight was 150 kilometres (93 miles) per hour in Clew Bay.
The worst affected area was Westport and the surrounding West Mayo area, where there were 4,477 premises without power, according to the ESB.
Fine Gael Cllr Peter Flynn complimented the ESB for their efforts in restoring power to premises in Westport.
“Half of Westport was without power on Sunday evening, and to be fair to the ESB, they got most of it back late last night."
Cllr Flynn said considerable damage was done to The W Cinema on James Street in the town.
“The most damage that seems to be done is to the roof of the cinema, which seems to be badly damaged. It’s miraculous that no one was hurt and that there wasn’t damage done to cars because it came down into the leisure centre,” he said.
Cllr Christy Hyland said the storm was “frightening” as the gusts were up to 150km/h in the town.
Over 2,400 premises were without power in the Crossmolina area as it, too, felt the brunt of the storm. Local Fianna Fáil Cllr Michael Loftus said the area has been badly affected by weather events over the last few weeks.
“The storm really hit our area between trees and electricity wires down," he said. "In the last few days we’ve been inundated with the frost, the snow and the wind now, it’s really affected us big time in Crossmolina."
“The river (Deel) is flowing is flowing nice and sweetly but the lake is very high, so a lot of rain has come down as well. I’d like to compliment Mayo County Council staff who were up until 4am cutting trees and getting roads re-opened.”
Over 1,600 premises were without electricity in Belmullet and Bangor Erris but there was no major damage to property .
“We’re still without power in part of Erris, there were two telephone poles knocked and a few trees fell but other than that, we were lucky," said Cllr Gerry Coyle.
In Castlebar, the air dome that covered four of the six courts at the tennis club at Lough Lannagh was blown down. It had been in place for a decade. However, Castlebar avoided the worst of the storm and there were not too many reports of power outages.
School games which were due to take place in the Connacht GAA University of Galway Air Dome have been cancelled.
As the county deals with the aftermath from Isha, there is another storm on the way as Storm Jocelyn is to make landfall in Mayo today (Tuesday).
An orange wind warning has been issued for Mayo and Galway, which is valid from 6pm to 12am tomorrow (Wednesday).
Met Éireann say some of the impacts will be large coastal waves with wave overtopping, very difficult travelling conditions, fallen trees and damage to power lines and already weakened structures.
