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AS COMMUNITIES ACROSS the west of the country still suffer without power, Ireland’s ability to cope with unexpected national emergencies has come into sharp focus in the wake of Storm Éowyn.
Thousands of people are still without power across the Midlands and West, and many have been told they won’t be reconnected until late this weekend. There were also extensive failures of water supply and broadband coverage as a result of the storm.
So why has Ireland’s recovery from this extreme weather event taken so long? And what steps can be taken to safeguard essential energy, water and communications networks against future severe storms?
The Journal spoke to sources in the emergency services and other critical agencies in multiple places across the country for this piece, with the aim of learning more about the obstacles encountered by those at the frontline of the recovery and reconnection effort.
We also spoke to an Irish-based expert in disaster response about the steps the nation can take to – in his words – “increase resilience and reduce vulnerability”.
The key takeaway from gardaí, ambulance, Fire Service and Defence sources we spoke to is that they are finding that minor unresolved day-to-day difficulties and frustrations are mushrooming into serious problems during major incidents.
Case in point, the electricity network.
The ESB stockpiled 27,000 poles following assessments after Storm Darwin in 2014 but the problems faced by crews is that Ireland’s low voltage electrical supply lines are, in a majority of cases, slung between poles above ground and across extensively woodland covered areas.
According to a senior source individual ESB teams are finding that it is taking them a day to reconnect a single house in some cases – even though there are 3,000 technicians on the ground, including crews sent from the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
The proximity to trees meant the lines were extensively damaged as Éowyn hit, one source with knowledge of the reconnection work said. However, the ESB has said putting those cables underground would be prohibitively expensive.
Uisce Eireann’s resilience has also come under strict focus – The Journal has learned it stockpiled 400 backup generators and moved them to the west in anticipation for Storm Éowyn’s track. They also got 40,000 five litre bottles stockpiled for distributed in the worst affected areas in the wake of the storm.
But that did nothing to prevent power being lost to its pump stations in the wake of the hurricane strength winds – meaning that, at one point, supplies to approximately one million people may have been at risk according to a spokeswoman for the utility.
Uisce Éireann has said that 130,000 people were without water in the aftermath of the storm – that has been reduced to 100 premises. They have said that mitigations they put in place meant that the risk was reduced.
The concept of National Resilience looks at a country’s ability to prepare and deal with major incidents such as natural or manmade disasters.
The Office of Emergency Planning in Ireland’s Department of Defence has an oversight function on emergency strategy – including how to respond to storms and extreme weather events and natural disasters.
During events like major storms, senior leaders agencies like Met Éireann, the Defence Forces, the Gardaí and Uisce Éireann convene to manage the response centrally – holding meetings at the Department of Agriculture on Kildare Street in Dublin as part of the National Emergency Coordination Group.
The meetings are chaired by senior civil servants.
When it comes down to the localised planning, however, it is individual councils who coordinate the response, often working with the leadership of agencies like the gardaí in their area.
Sources who spoke to The Journal in recent days said that when it came to mounting a response to national emergencies, it was often the case that structures and systems that were in place at national level may not work uniformly in every locality.
Again, the sources highlighted how minor unresolved issues could have an outsized negative effect during an emergency response.
There were myriad examples of failings during the recent storm, those sources said. The most serious of those was that the emergency services’ digital radio system collapsed because it is linked to mobile phone masts.
Tetra is the sole method by which dispatchers communicate with gardaí, ambulance service, fire brigade, the prison service and other frontline agencies.
Tetra should allow the various services communicate with each other during a major incident. The backup option is often mobile phones but they were also down because both systems are cellphone based. The older analogue radio system was removed from most emergency services, except those who are dealing with sea emergencies.
Looking at the issue of transport, Garda sources said that during the recent heavy snowfall in North Kerry and South Limerick officers had to requisition tractors to deliver medicines and other supplies to stranded vulnerable pensioners. This was because they did not have suitable vehicles with four wheel drive capability that could cope with the conditions.
A briefing document from the Department of Defence also raised resilience issues around the volunteer Civil Defence service, which it said was not being adequately funded by local authorities. It also said that some units were not in well-maintained bases.
There is a review going on at present into this area but as one senior civil service source put it:
“The whole response is based on the aptitude of managers on the ground – it depends on their natural flair for organising things in a crisis”.
That source used the example of the 2023 recent evacuation of Wexford General Hospital, when a fire engulfed the facility, to show how local managers with good relationships can solve a major emergency.
Doctor Dug Cubie is a principal investigator in the Disaster Research Cluster in University College Cork in the centre of Law and Environment.
He and his colleagues study how countries respond to largescale emergencies and, using those studies, he then examines how the law can help countries cope better with future crises.
Ireland needs to reshape its view on emergencies given the impact of climate change on the scale of winter storms and other weather events, Cubie said.
“This is a challenge for all countries. I don’t think Ireland is unique in this – either uniquely badly prepared or uniquely well prepared.
The country, he said, needs to undertake comprehensive reviews of current and future risks in order to determine how best to prioritise the resources.
Cubie believes that the issue of resilience of the national grid is a key concern that needs addressing – particularly around looking at tree coverage near electricity lines and whether it is best to put those cables underground as in other countries.
According to ESB Networks the supply comprises 157,000km of overhead network and 26,000km of the more expensive underground cables.
Cubie said that it is “unsustainable” that people in some areas suffered two prolonged outages of power in recent months and he believes there is a real and present need for a “vulnerability assessment” to determine where at-risk people are living.
“We have the larger systemic issue about how do we ensure that the things like electricity and water are going to be protected and have greater resilience, but also then, from the societal perspective, how do we ensure that the most vulnerable in society are identified in advance and aren’t left for days without water or power or heating in the middle of the winter,” he added.
Cubie said there is “no quick fix” and that risk can never be totally removed.
“Managing the residual risk requires us to have sufficient resources for the principal response agencies.”
“We need to increase resilience, reduce vulnerability, and then ensure that we have the appropriate, geographically and organisationally positioned resources to manage the residual risk that will exist.”
He stressed that we need to ensure that “in a changing climate, we recognise that that risk may be increasing”.
At a political level, the government has been accused by opposition TDs of being “missing in action” amid the storm response.
Speaking in the Dáil yesterday, Taoiseach Michéal Martin agreed that Ireland needs “a fundamental rethink in terms of storm resilience” while his coalition partner Simon Harris conceded that a “bigger, deeper dive” was needed into how Ireland responded.
Unsure of what exactly is happening with the earth’s climate? Check out our FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to finding good information online.
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