Irish Times Reporters MORE than 30,000 ESB customers had their electricity supplies cut off in the early hours of yesterday as the tail end of Hurricane Mitch brought high winds, gusting up to 90 m.p.h., to much of the Republic.
A man in his 20s was critically injured when a tree crashed on his car at Reaghstown, near Ardee in Co Louth. The incident happened at 7.45 a.m., and the injured man, who is from Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, was taken to Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Drogheda but later transferred to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.
Meanwhile the stormy weather of the last couple of weeks has left orphaned seal pups stranded on numerous beaches. The Irish Seal Sanctuary in Garristown, Co Meath, says it has received about 60 calls in the last fortnight.
The ESB had 350 crews on standby to deal with the expected disruption to power supplies. According to a spokesman the main cause of disruption was trees and branches falling across power lines. He added that the west coast and parts of the midlands had experienced winds measuring violent storm force 11.
The worst damage to power lines was in west Mayo and north Galway, and to towns such as Belmullet, Westport and Tuam. However, damage was widespread - with power lines down - in parts of Cork, Kerry and Clare, as well as the midlands.
High winds caused traffic disruption because of fallen trees and downed telephone and ESB lines. Eireann and ESB crews were involved in emergency repair work. but there were no reports of major outages similar to those which occurred last Christmas during the last intense storm.
According to Met Eireann the strongest gusts were recorded at Malin Head, with winds of up to 90 m.p.h. At Belmullet there were 70 m.p.h. winds. The average speed over a 10-hour period was 40 to 50 m.p.h. While the worst of the storm had passed yesterday the west coast was still experiencing high seas, with waves up to 20 and 30 feet. Met Eireann has warned that another weather system could bring further storms from the south-west by tomorrow.
Although the storms Ireland experienced over the past few days were not officially a hurricane, but a mid-latitude storm, they were associated with Hurricane Mitch. The worst of the storm by-passed the Republic. .'.