No national flood plan for expected high tides

THERE will be no national coordinated plan to prepare for next week’s record high tides despite the Office of Public Works (OPW) despite being given the responsibility for drawing up an emergency strategy following recent flooding.

Sea levels are expected to peak at close to five metres along some stretches of coastline which will result in serious flooding in low lying areas if coupled with specific wind conditions.

The OPW, which was designated as the lead agency in flood relief from 2004 onwards, said the precautions and response to various risks of flooding was “up to the individual local authorities”.

Its elevated status as national advisor for flood protection was sanctioned by the Flood Policy Review Group — set up after the devastation caused in 2002.

That group made a number of recommendations to ensure that the country was able to minimise the personal and financial risks of serious flooding.

Among those was that the OPW would take over coordinating and controlling the country’s exposure to flooding through the “identification and management of existing, and particularly potential future, flood risks in an integrated, proactive and river basin-based manner”.

However, on this occasion, the only directives that have been issued from Government have been from the Department of Marine which has issued a high tide warning to all local authorities.

The OPW says it has been working to implement the review group’s recommendations and has funded relief works in a number of towns.

It has still to complete the River Basin Flood Risk Management Plans that were supposed to be developed.

However, it does plan to make its flood mapping service available online from October and last year it funded a ‘Plan, Prepare and Protect’ advertising campaign.

“It is up to the local authorities to take the appropriate preventative measures to respond to flooding.... it would be impossible to manage that at a central Government level,” a spokesman said.

Residents in low lying areas of Cork have already raised concerns that they have been unable to source sandbags to protect themselves and do not know what agency to turn to for guidance.

In Waterford, the local authority says it has prepared a traffic management strategy if the worst case scenario comes to pass next week. Both Limerick and Dublin cities have put more substantial measures in place to deal with the water levels.

Met Éireann and the Marine Institute have said the biggest risk to towns and cities along tidal waterways will occur if the wind comes in from the wrong direction and is accompanied by heavy rain. If the wind blows inland when the high tides hit on September 7, 8, 9 and 10, the threat will be most acute.