Flooding crisis - Prepare for the future

Thursday, November 26, 2009

IT is hard to find words powerful enough to console the thousands of people who have had to watch powerlessly as frightening floods destroyed the homes and businesses they worked so hard to build up.

Today’s report that Cork came within four centimetres of an absolutely catastrophic flood can only deepen that concern.

Water levels in the Inniscarra reservoir came that close — the width of a small hand — to spilling over the top of the 1950s hydro-electricity dam and turning Cork into New Orleans.

At the moment the flood victims are angry and it is easy to empathise with them. An EU report warned yesterday we can expect more frequent and more spectacular floods in the future.

We should use the anger, despair and fear generated by these floods to energise a campaign to ensure that we prepare properly for a future we have been warned about. More immediately we should do all we can, every one of us, to help the victims of today’s floods.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, November 26, 2009