By Diarmaid Doherty
SENIOR officials in Donegal County Council say the devastating incidents of flooding in parts of East Donegal at the weekend are becoming all too common, and warned they could occur again in any part of Donegal, at any time.
Flash-floods on Saturday evening left homes and businesses in Raphoe, Castlefinn, Convoy and Killygordon counting the cost of major damage.
And as the clean-up operation continued on Monday morning, councillors gathered at County House in Lifford for the July meeting of Donegal County Council where an emergency motion to discuss the weekend incidents was tabled.
Councillors voiced frustration at the fact that local communities had again been impacted by flash-floods despite ongoing calls for proper defence measures to be put in place.
The council’s Director of Emergency Services, Garry Martin said Saturday night’s incident was a “pluvial event” where a huge amount of rainfall had occurred in a very localised area, in a short space of time.
“It can happen anywhere, at any time without any warning,” he said.
“They are impossible to predict, impossible to plan for, and impossible to forward-deploy for.
“Pluvial events are unfortunately becoming a little bit more frequent in Donegal. We have seen them in Donegal Town in February 2022. We’ve now seen it in Raphoe, and in Inishowen in August 2017.”
Prior to Monday’s meeting, Donegal County Council issued a statement in which they outlined the council’s response to the weekend flooding incidents.
The statement said Met Éireann’s weather warning alerting service advised of a Level Yellow rainfall warning for 13 counties, including Donegal, at 18.36 hours on Saturday.
“It should be noted that yellow rainfall warnings are cautionary in nature and are frequent in Donegal and other counties,” the statement added.
A detailed report on the council’s response was also presented to members at Monday’s council meeting with Garry Martin saying the first calls for assistance were received at 19.40 hours.
“Fire appliances were initially deployed from Stranorlar and Letterkenny to Castlefinn,” he said.
“Subsequently and as a result of the extent of the incident further appliances were deployed from Buncrana, Milford, Strabane and Castlederg and a second Letterkenny appliance to Castlefinn.
“Effectively we had seven appliances deployed to Castlefinn.
“Separate to that, Donegal Town fire brigade was deployed to Convoy and Glenties was deployed to Castlefinn to deal with emerging incidents there.”
Sandbags were also brought to the affected towns by the fire crews, council staff and members of the Civil Defence.
“Normally if you see an event like this is going to happen you would have those resources forward-deployed,” he added.
“So when you are deploying after the event, you are trying to play catch-up.
“Having said that, I think some of those resources did actually assist in defending premises and that is one of the positive outcomes.”
Mr Martin said the council’s Road Services staff were also deployed from the Inishowen and Letterkenny-Milford Municipal Districts to assist staff locally.
“The roads staff distributed sandbags to householders and businesses and implemented measures to divert flood waters where possible including roads that were damaged by the flood waters,” he said.
“They also commenced the clean up and assessment operation on Sunday morning with bridges and culverts being inspected for any damage. Debris was removed from roads and areas which required more extensive repair.”
He added: “The primary objective in any initial response is to ensure the safety of persons at risk and to defend the properties then from flooding where it is possible to do so. This was successful in a number of locations in Raphoe.”
Mr Martin acknowledged the work of the council’s various teams as well as the members of the local communities who helped out during the flooding and in the clean-up operations.
“At present we have reports of ten commercial premises and eight domestic properties flooded to an extent,” he said.
The council’s Chief Executive John McLaughlin and Bryan Cannon, Director of Roads and Transportation also thanked the council’s staff, response teams and the local communities for their efforts.
They both said that lessons can be learned, and agreed that flash-flooding incidents appear to be a much more common occurrence than ever before.
Home and business owners are being urged to seek help and assistance in relation to flood damage and Donegal County Council say assistance is available from the Department of Social Protection (DSP) and the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment.
The DSP supports for eligible householders affected are available through contacting the National Community Welfare Contact Centre at 0818 607080, while locally, the helpline number is 074 91 72282.
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