Family home floods for second time in less than two years

A family whose home flooded for a second time in less than two years after a water mains burst said the emotional impact is taking its toll.

Sarah Murtagh said she had to get parents Jimmy, 81, and Joan, 71, from their bed in the middle of the night when the mains outside Navan, Co Meath, burst.

Their home was gutted following a similar flood at Christmas 2015 and the family had only returned to their house last September.

“My daughter came into me at about twenty past two and said that there was water all over the floor of the bathroom,” said Ms Murtagh.

“I looked in and it was a dirty brown so I knew it wasn’t a leaky tap. I opened the kitchen door and knew straight away the whole thing was happening again. I went in and got mum and dad, and basically when we were looking in the window it was just rising and rising, so it was a case of ‘get out’.”

She told RTÉ’s News at One that they phoned the fire brigade straight away.

“The council were on the job very quickly because the fire brigade, once they got the call, they knew it was the same thing that had happened previously, so it didn’t take as long to have the mains shut down.

“It’s all the emotional stress, especially for mum and dad having to go through it again,” she said.

Up to 10,000 customers were affected in the areas north, west, and south of Navan town and some surrounding areas following the pipe burst, with supply restored yesterday evening.

The R162 Navan/Kingstown Road at the bottom of Proudstown Hill was closed off while crews worked on the pipe. Tankers were mobilised and replenished water storage tanks in Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan and Meath Disability Services.

Irish Water said that water tankers were also on standby for residential use but were not deployed as the outage was under a 24-hour period.

Last week, some 50,000 homes and businesses were left without water for seven days after the water main in Staleen, Co Meath, burst.

At the time, Irish Water warned that some 6,500km of piping — approximately 10% of the country’s network — was at risk of bursting.

Conor Foley, regional operations lead for Irish Water, told RTÉ that the main in Navan was made of similar material to the pipe that burst in Staleen and these kinds of mains “become fragile and brittle over time” and can “catastrophically fail”.