SEA AND RIVER ALERTS:IN ICY conditions Naval divers are set to resume a search of the river Lee in Cork this morning for a 27-year-old man missing since New Year's Eve.
Gardaí at Anglesea Street requested the assistance of a team of Naval Service divers after receiving a report that a man was seen in the Lee.
The man was spotted in the south channel of the river near Sullivan’s Quay at about 9.30pm on New Year’s Eve but disappeared before he could be rescued.
The search was stood down at 5pm yesterday but was set to resume at first light this morning, according to a Naval Service spokesman.
An RNLI lifeboat crew in Co Clare was called out in difficult and conditions yesterday to carry out a search of the Shannon estuary following a report of a suspected body in the water.
In what may have been a false alarm, a crew member on board a ship, which was delivering a load of coal to the ESB power station at Moneypoint, reported seeing what he thought was a body in the water close to the jetty.
Despite the poor conditions, the lifeboat volunteers carried out a detailed search of a stretch between Moneypoint and the ferry terminal at Killimer.
A lifeboat spokesperson said: “We discovered quite an amount of debris on the surface in the search area. It is likely that the person who made the report actually saw a large chunk of timber. It is always as well to alert the Coast Guard if there is a doubt and we are always prepared and happy to undertake a search in such circumstances even though in this case it proved to be a false alarm.”
An elderly woman died in a fall from a window at a nursing home in Cork yesterday.
Maura Looney, an 82-year-old widow from Congress Road in Turners Cross, was fatally injured when she fell from a second-storey window at the Care Choice nursing home on the Middle Glanmire Road in Montenotte at about 7.30am.