There were young people kayaking through floodwaters on St Patrick's Street in Cork on Tuesday night. Yet despite the inundation of shops, cafés and other business premises in the city centre, a remarkable community spirit prevailed as people mucked in to help out. Twitter's #corkfloods bulletin board even had a message from one Cork woman asking if anyone could recommend a "badly flooded but somehow still open café/restaurant" where she could have lunch, to show solidarity with the unfortunate owners. Many householders in Cork, Limerick and elsewhere are facing the grim task of mopping up and saving what furniture and fixtures as they can.
Not for the first time, the Republic's second city bore the brunt of this latest bout of flooding – and Fianna Fáil leader Michéal Martin , who represents Cork South Central, complained that the Government's response was "not urgent enough" or commensurate with the scale of the challenge. Yet the provisional allocation of a paltry €10 million for emergency flood relief this year has been topped up by Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan by a further €15 million. Still he couldn't resist the political jibe about "very poor planning" under the previous administration, with houses built in floodplains due to "short-term thinking in this country [THAT]has gone on far too long", as he said on RTÉ radio.
The reality is that Cork was built in the floodplain of the River Lee many centuries ago and there is nothing that can be done about that now. However, because the city is economically important, it needs to be protected. Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams suggested in the Dáil that a barrage similar to the Lagan Weir – or even the Thames Barrier in London – should form the key element of Cork's flood defences in the future. And indeed, with further "extreme weather events" likely as a result of climate change, it seems inescapable that such a costly solution will have to be considered in order to protect businesses and householders in the flood-prone city centre, many of which are probably no longer insurable.
Simplistic approaches such as dredging rivers – championed lately by British prime minister David Cameron in response to the flooding crisis in England and Wales – should be avoided. Indeed, hydrology experts have warned that dredging alone would not have prevented flooding in the Somerset Levels. As The Guardian found, a "back to nature" strategy has a better chance of working, by returning rivers to the "sluggish, slow systems they once were", using fields in the floodplain as attenuation ponds and planting many more trees trees in watershed areas to reduce run-off.
Managing flooding to mitigate its impacts must be the watchword at this difficult time for so many.