This article is from page 70 of the 2008-08-12 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 70 JPG
that this was the fifth time the sewers in his six-year-old house have been blocked due to rainfall since he moved in there years ago.
On Wednesday last water in the sewers close to his home reached the top, so he was unable to flush his to1- oi
“With all the rain I thought this might happen so I flushed one of the toilets and the water came up to meet me, it had no where to go.”
Two days later just one of the three toilets in the house could be used and then not very often, according to Pe- om
During the torrential rain he had five adult guests from France and two children staying at his home.
“It was very hard to have to tell them that they could not flush the toilets or that they should go to the pub,” he said.
The washing machine and dish- washer were also out of bounds.
Peter said the direct translation of the name of the estate is brown mash and he believed he would be living in
just that if the flooding continued.
Shannon County Councillor Ger- ry Flynn (Ind) believes not just the heavy rainfall caused the flooding in Shannon but an infrastructure defi- ole
“Thousands of homes were built and the people that bought them now can’t flush their toilets. “The writ- ing has been on the wall for years. We knew if we had major floods we were in trouble. The drainage system just cannot cope,’ he added. “If it is a thing that we cannot sustain a few hours of torrential rain without all this damage it is terrible,” he said.
He said that a council policy of in- sisting that houses are built below road level was further exasperating the problem.
Meanwhile a Clare County Coun- cil spokesperson said that Shannon coped well compared to other areas in the country hit by similar rainfall in the past week.
As workers travelled home some roads had to be closed and diversions put in place including at Minister’s Cross. “Land adjoining roads was discharging water so quickly that the drains could not cope,” he said.
From 4.45pm on Wednesday two See Seige Seitalmecanee ees e nis and Shannon fire service worked until midnight relieving flooding, putting up signs and distributing sand bags. The council contractors responsible for the pump houses – Response Engineering – worked all yen rea