A FORMER Lord Mayor has called on Dublin City Council
to employ social media to warn residents of flooding after she claimed the
local authority failed to respond sufficiently to the deluge that damaged homes
across the Northside last month.
During Sunday and Monday October 23 and 24, record
rainfall across the city and county of up to 120 mm over a 32 hour period
caused damage to hundreds of homes across north Dublin.
Cllr Emer Costello (Lab) said the city council failed
to give residents in areas such as East Wall, North Strand and Cabra early and
adequate warning about the record rainfall event.
She said the flooding was a
“stark lesson
? due to the
council’s
“complete failure
? to make even basic use of existing technologies
such as text messaging, email and social media websites such as Facebook and
Twitter to warn residents of the deluge.
Cllr Costello said she emailed the city council at
3.15pm on Monday, October 24 to see if they intended to issue a flood warning.
She said she received an email from the council in reply to her request stating
that it had not issued a flood warning at that stage.
She received no further emails or texts from the
council until 8.30pm that night when it informed her that its emergency plan
had been activated half an hour earlier at 8pm.
She said that at the most recent city council meeting
on Monday, November 7, the city manager did not explain why the local authority
failed to put in place an emergency flood warning until 8pm that evening. She
claimed the council also failed to update its website.
In addition, she stated that the council had also
failed to give residents any advice about where to access sandbags that might
have helped them alleviate the flooding.
Tracey Douglas, who lives on Dingle Road in Cabra,
said her house was severely flooded that evening. She revealed that city
council workers did not arrive to tackle the flooding in the area until at
least 10pm that night and added that the local authority had not given the
residents any warning about the deluge.
“My daughter was after coming in at 8pm and she said
that the water had come up to the wall in the garden,
? she told Northside
People.
“When myself and my husband arrived back to the house we had to walk
through the water to get through the house.
“We didn’t think the house would flood. We were not
warned about this.
“Dublin City Council needs to communicate effectively
with its own councillors in the first instance and then use the website and
social networking sites to get the information out as widely as possible,
? she
concluded.
A spokesman for the council referred Northside People
to the report on the flooding that the city manager presented to city
councillors recently on the matter.
“Forecasting is an inexact science and science cannot
predict the location of where the heavy rain will occur, which properties will
flood or when they might flood,
? the report stated.
“The major emergency plan was activated at 8.15pm in
Dublin City and South Dublin County Council but before this the city had
mobilised resources and had activated the inter agency structures provided for
in the Emergency Management Framework.
?
The report added that the problems encountered by the
public were widespread throughout the Dublin area.
“The control centre prioritised calls based on the information
received and on feedback from responding crews. It was not possible to respond
to all requests for assistance, such as minor house flooding, and priority was
given to the rescue of persons trapped by the flood waters.
“There were up to 20 personnel processing calls in the
control centre at the height of the emergency.
?