By Diarmaid Doherty
DONEGAL County Council say the clean-up and recovery operations following this week’s heavy storms are likely to continue for the rest of this week.
The county is still recovering from the widespread damage caused after Storm Isha battered much of Donegal for several hours on Sunday night.
Many homes and businesses across Donegal remain without power this morning. Many families have not had power since the weekend.
Yesterday, ESB workers battling to restore power and repair faults were joined by ESB crews from the southern part of the country who arrived in Donegal to help out in the repair operation.
The impact from Storm Jocelyn which struck Donegal on Tuesday night may not have been as severe, but power outages and issues of heavy flooding ensured there was still much disruption for many homes and businesses in different areas.
At one stage on Monday, over 40,000 ESB customers were without power across Donegal after the overnight storms.
ESB crews worked through terrible conditions in an effort to restore power but their work was hampered by the arrival of more heavy winds on Tuesday evening.
Last night, ESB staff were dealing with faults at dozens of power plants around Donegal with an estimated 1,800 customers still without power, the majority of them in the Letterkenny area.
The ESB’s Donegal Area Manager, Gerry Gallagher told the Donegal News that unfortunately many of the remaining power supply outages will take a little bit longer to restore.
He said crews have arrived in Donegal from the Cork, Kerry and Waterford region while extra machinery and specialised equipment has also been brought into the county.
“The low hanging fruit has been sorted at this stage, but because of the nature of the problems that remain, the man-power that’s needed will be intensive,” he said.
“There are once off houses to sort and there are all sorts of pole breakages and other problems which will take time.”
Countless homes and businesses were also left without water for a time in the early part of this week. On Monday, Uisce Éireann issued 16 different water outage notices across the county – many of the outages caused by power supply problems at water treatment plants.
Fortunately, there were no serious injuries reported despite a number of worrying incidents during the storms.
On Monday, the residents of three houses in Newtowncunningham were left shaken after their homes were struck by lightning.
In Killygordon, the owners of a house had a lucky escape when a shed avoided crashing into their home when it struck a telegraph pole at the front of the building.
There were many incidents of damage to businesses and buildings and heavy flooding on Tuesday, mainly in East Donegal, also caused much disruption.
Donegal County Council’s Severe Weather Assessment Team (SWAT) held an initial storm preparation meeting on Sunday and meetings have been held every day this week.
Staff from the council’s Roads Service, Housing Maintenance, Fire Service and council staff working on behalf of Uisce Éireann were mobilised in all areas of the county from Sunday afternoon.
The response operation continued through to Monday evening and again on Tuesday morning.
The impact from Storm Jocelyn on Tuesday evening was much less than Storm Isha but the council say crews will continue working today (Thursday) on the clean-up operation.
Bryan Cannon, Director of Roads and Transportation said over the course of this week, a large number of roads were obstructed or blocked by fallen trees including some of our National and Regional Road Network.
“Working together with colleagues in the various utilities, staff from Donegal County Council responded to a wide variety and large number of incidents from Sunday afternoon and continue with the clean-up and recovery operation,” he told the Donegal News.
“I would like to thank all those staff that responded to incidents over the last few days and to the media that assisted with keeping the public updated.
“I’m also grateful to the general public who took precautions to ensure the safety of their own property as well as heeding the warnings against taking unnecessary journeys during the severe weather alerts.”
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