‘Heartbroken’ woman prepares to leave her Cork home

A woman yesterday spoke of her despair as she prepared to abandon her family house after it flooded to a depth of several inches when storm waters surrounded the house and turned it into an island.

Catherine Quirke said that her cottage at Knockanduff outside Rathcormac in north Cork is now surrounded by several feet of water while the house itself is under four inches of water as a result of rising water table levels.

“I’m heartbroken, absolutely heartbroken. I can hardly look at it – it’s just unbearable pain,” said Ms Quirke, who said that she went to bed on Thursday night after water flooded her garden only to discover on Friday morning that her house was flooded.

"It's horrific, absolutely horrific – there's no other word for it – I can't get the house pumped out because there's just nowhere to pump the water to; my lawn is like an ocean, it's like an ocean flowing from one lawn into the other," she said.

Renovated
The cottage has been in the Quirke family for almost a century and was recently renovated but Ms Quirke can't remember flooding like this before as she prepared to abandon the house to move in with her sister, Nora, who lives in Fermoy.

“I have to abandon the house – I don’t have any other choice at the moment – nobody ever experienced anything like this here before. It just started flowing in from the fields around me and all I can do now is wait for the flood waters to clear,” said Ms Quirke, whose house was not insured.