Sarah Redmond stands in her upended sittingroom in Kilternan, south Co Dublin, with her head in her hands.
The 38-year-old, who has five children with autism, says with tears in her eyes: “I can’t cope, I really can’t. Everything is destroyed.”
Redmond, who is originally from Dún Laoghaire, was woken during the early hours of Tuesday by her 16-year-old daughter who could hear water running through the family’s kitchen.
“We couldn’t get out of the house, we couldn’t get the kids out,” says Redmond. “My partner was pushing out the water and we’ve had to rip up the floors. I had just got them done, they cost me over €1,000 and they had to be ripped up.”
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Redmond has been living in the house with her children (aged 16, 11, nine, six and two) and her partner for the last three years. The new estate was developed by Clanmil Housing Association, an approved housing body, over recent years with homes allocated to families on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council’s housing list.
Residents of the homes, which are situated in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains, spent much of Tuesday and Wednesday clearing out their properties due to flooding, understood to have been caused by a mountain stream bursting its banks during Storm Chandra.
The families have been provided with temporary accommodation in a hotel.
“All the kids’ clothes, all their new toys from Christmas, everything in the storage room is all destroyed,” says Redmond.
[ ‘No one was pumping the water’: Rathfarnham deals with Storm Chandra aftermathOpens in new window ]
“My brand new dryer is gone. My sofas are ruined, the cooker, washing machine, freezer. They’re all relatively new. I can’t even wash the dishes, it’s just dirty. We’ve no electricity. I don’t know what to do. I haven’t stopped crying.”
Redmond says she suffers with her mental health, while her youngest child has been sick since November.
“My partner’s mother has offered that we can stay in hers until everything is sorted,” she says. “We have nowhere else to go and it’s tough because the kids are in special-needs schools nearby.”
A young mother of three was also among those removing damaged floorboards from her home.
“I don’t even know where to start,” she says. “It’s the realisation now of how much damage, how much dirt there was flowing through the house. There was worms coming through in the water. It was disgusting.”
The woman says she woke early on Tuesday morning, noticed water coming into the kitchen and called Dublin Fire Brigade.
“The water just kept coming; it was scary and there was nothing we could do to stop it.”
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county councillor Lettie McCarthy says many residents in Kilternan, Ticknock, Aikens Village in Sandyford and Stepaside were affected by flooding.
In relation to the homes at Cookstown Lane, the Labour councillor said: “We should not have new builds prone to flooding.”
“My heart goes out to those young people, you think of the excitement of getting the house and buying your furniture and being proud of your home and then this happens. It shouldn’t be happening in a new build and we need to look and find out what the reasons are,” she says.
“I think if you look at that whole area, we’re at the foothills of the mountains, water runs off the mountains. It’s full of streams and we need to be very careful. Any time we interfere with the water table, we’re potentially causing more problems for somebody down the line.
“But we should be able to deal with heavy rains. Where any building is happening, we should be building in contingency plans for heavy rains. It’s fairly basic.”
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council said its planning authority did not comment on individual sites. Clanmil Housing Association has been contacted for comment.
