Learning the lessons - Floods just a glimpse of the future

AS many people struggle to rebuild homes or businesses after the floods, their emotions may be a combination of anger, despair and the unspoken trepidation that it is only a matter of time before the floods return.

Just as with so many of the terrible challenges facing us, anger and a feeling of helplessness are predictable. We feel better if we can rationalise these disasters; if we can put a face on those we imagine responsible for the floods; if we can point to clerics who protected paedophile colleagues; if we can prosecute bankers who crossed the line and if we can pillory the politicians we blame for nearly everything.

This may be predictable but it is not altogether helpful. Any one calamity is the consequence of a series of decisions, some taken decades ago.

The floods in Cork or Limerick, in Ballinasloe or Clonmel, were not caused because the ESB had to deal with unprecedented waters above the Lee or the Shannon, the Liffey or the Erne dams.

The frightening deluge released on the Lee exacerbated a situation almost out of control but there was no option. What is at issue, though, is how these decisions were communicated and the timing of the water release.

On Monday night, Cork city manager Joe Gavin told the city council that the ESB flood alerts, issued on November 19, greatly underestimated the volume of water coming through the Inniscarra dam. A report prepared for Mr Gavin shows that the ESB issued four flood warnings. However, the report concludes that the company released almost twice the amount of water that its final, official warning predicted. This was unavoidable but it did make a bad situation worse.

Yesterday, ESB chief executive Padraig McManus said he was happy with how the ESB discharged its duties and that all appropriate warnings had been given.

Whatever happened and however it happened, the floods caused significant damage and everything that can be done to better prepare for the greater floods already anticipated must be done. This will require a comprehensive report.

It must consider all of the factors. It must consider how planning decisions rendered flood plains obsolete. It must consider how land and river drainage of recent decades contributed. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can recognise that process for the disaster it is.

The report should consider afforestation and how unchecked paving contributed to the mess. It must consider the role of the ESB, how they managed water levels in the reservoirs in the days before the floods.

It must study how they communicated their intentions and what the city council did with this information. It might be interesting too to consider how a privatised ESB might have behaved; whose interests would have prevailed, their shareholders’ or Cork city’s.

If all of this is not done our preparations will again be piecemeal and ineffective and with each recurring and greater flood, we will pay a higher price.

As this week’s events in Copenhagen underline, we must prepare for rainfall at least as heavy as that of recent days, weeks and months. Once again we have been warned and, thankfully, without any loss of life. We may not be so lucky the next time.

And as Copenhagen so graphically warns us, we don’t have much time — or any alternative — but to prepare for a changed climate bringing even greater floods.