Government must learn lessons from Storm Éowyn

All hail the ‘good’ room.

The much-maligned and oft-underused ‘good’ or ‘sitting’ room is something common to most Irish homes my generation grew up in. There would be a ‘living’ room where the family would spend most of their down-time, watching TV, talking, welcoming guests etc.

And then there would be a ‘sitting’ room which would be rarely, if ever used. When I was growing up in Breaffy, we would move to the ‘sitting’ room for Christmas and it brought great excitement. We’d move the TV out there, set-up the Christmas tree and Christmas had not begun until we were in the sitting room.

It was a strange quirk of the design of many Irish homes in the 1970s and '80s. Money was not plentiful but still an extra room was often considered essential even if its use wasn’t.

Like our home in Breaffy, my wife’s family home in Achill Sound has a rarely used sitting room and never were we as grateful for its existence than in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn.

We’re well used to high winds here in Dooega on the south of Achill Island. With the prevailing south-westerly winds, we’re often among the first in the firing line for storms whipping in from the Atlantic.

The storm of January 2014 brought considerable damage here as the wind combined with high and spring tides wreaked havoc on anyone living close to the coast. There have been plenty of bad storms since but the last two have gone to another level.

Storm Darragh came at us from the north, doing particular damage in Mweelin, just north of us. We had two sewer lids on our septic tank bolted in which somehow were taken and swept over 100 metres south, thankfully not hitting anything in its path. As I just about managed to lift one of them to bring it back, I realised just how powerful Mother Nature can be.

Plenty of homes lost roof slates – lethal weapons when airborne – while fences and a good chunk of the admittedly few trees in the village came down. Our satellite dish came loose and was swinging like a wrecking ball just above one of the kid’s bedroom window.

It wasn’t advisable to go out in it but it was less advisable altogether to leave it and end up breaking the window. So out we went at 3am to pull it down. It was quite the experience.

Darragh was considered a serious storm so when we saw the projections for Éowyn, we were extremely concerned.

You are asking for trouble in Dooega if you leave anything loose outside so most sheds were already full of garden furniture and the likes. Ours was – is – full to capacity.

At 4am, myself and my wife were upstairs trying to figure out what the banging noise on one of the Velux windows was. Not long after, we heard a scratching noise under Aisling’s car.

Turns out it was the same object, a flashing fixing from the Velux which, in the few hours it was gone, had led to a leak. Thankfully that was the end of the storm damage but the drama was only starting.

The power went during the storm and on Friday we decided we would go on visits or on trips at the weekend rather than waiting in a cold, dark house.

But then our middle child, Éamon, woke up sick on the Friday night. He wasn’t long recovered from a three-night stay in Mayo University Hospital earlier in the month, and with a history of pneumonia, hearing a nasty, chesty cough was a concern.

When we got up to ring Westdoc at daybreak on Saturday morning, we discovered we had no phone signal. I was unaware it was gone throughout the island – I had no way of knowing. So off I went driving around the village in search of a signal. No joy but I met a neighbour who is one of the few to have kept her landline and so I was able to ring Westdoc.

Trouble is, the Westdoc nurse in Galway couldn’t connect to the doctor on duty in Achill Sound because they had no phone signal either.

The recommendation then was to go to Mayo University Hospital but that wasn’t somewhere we wanted to go unnecessarily. We have a fair idea from experience of when Éamon needs to make that journey and when he doesn’t so we said we’d persevere locally.

I drove out to the surgery and knocked on the door. No joy – the doctor was, it turns out, gone on an emergency call. I met plenty of others there who needed Westdoc and had no phone signal to help them.

A few trips and a few phone calls back at the landline in Dooega got us there and we were seen at 6pm. For our neighbours, it was a reminder of when there was only one phone in the village and how you would ask someone to ring at an appointed time and wait patiently by the payphone. It was like going back in time.

Steroids and antibiotics for tonsillitis were prescribed as was the recommendation to sit on a warm couch and watch TV to recover, neither of which was possible in Dooega with no power and no sense of when it would be back.

Step in Aisling’s parents’ ‘good’ room!

They had power almost throughout the weekend but as they are in their eighties, we did not want to be bringing sick children in on top of them. So we were able to bunker into the ‘good’ room for the warmth of an electric fire, electric heaters and the radiator, charge phones and torches and the kids could watch TV for a while.

It was an absolute godsend. Aisling’s parents were in their living room.

We spent most of the Saturday, Sunday and Monday after Storm Eowyn in there.

We weren’t sure how long we’d be without power. The update on the ESB’s Power Check website on the Sunday advised us it would be Wednesday, February 5, a full ten days away, before it would be restored. That was a frightening proposition.

But the ESB crews – who, together with their colleagues across Europe who came to assist, were the heroes of the aftermath – managed to have power back in Dooega on the Monday evening.

Others were not as lucky, including my ‘home house’ in Breaffy where power only came back last Thursday. We’re acutely aware and know of people who have endured extremely stressful experiences. We never lost water, some elderly people have been without water and power for well over a week.

Lessons have to be learned. The Government’s slow response to European offers for assistance, the lack of generators at water treatment plants and the ability of our electricity network to cope with such storms in the future all have to be assessed.

But, as always, from hard situations emerges a solidarity and in Achill, like elsewhere, the generosity of neighbours checking in on people, businesses offering free use of power and the local GAA club setting up a community hub, use of showers etc showed the best of us.