EVACUATION:AN 80-YEAR-OLD wheelchair- bound woman who had to be evacuated from her Co Clare home last week was forced yesterday into a second evacuation – this time from her daughter's home, located nearby.
Grandmother Nora Mason from Springfield, Clonlara, Co Clare, had to be taken from her daughter’s house on the back of a tractor in the early hours of yesterday morning.
She had been moved to the house late last week after her own house, located just 20 yards away but, critically, much closer to the river Shannon, came in danger of flooding days ago.
Her own home was yesterday lying in three feet of floodwater.
She was staying yesterday at Jurys Inn in Limerick, where the HSE was providing emergency accommodation. Twenty-five families were evacuated from homes on the outskirts of Limerick on Monday night.
Mrs Mason’s son-in-law Joseph Quinlivan described how he, his wife, Geraldine, and their four sons, Jason (22), Philip (19), John (13) and Evan (12), were helped by local residents to bring the boys’ grandmother to safety.
“The Civil Defence and the Army helped us take her out of our house in the back bucket of a tractor and on to a low loader and about half a mile up the road – and the rain coming down on top of her – before we got her into the ambulance.”
Mr Quinlivan, who lost his job at SPS in Shannon six weeks ago, said people from the village of Clonlara and nearby parishes arrived at the scene “in what was like a convoy, with tractors and trailers and sandbags”.
“There were young fellows not even 10 years of age wading through water carrying sandbags.
“People knew we were fighting a losing battle but they wouldn’t give up until we told them to. My God, they lifted my heart to see them,” he continued.
Mr Quinlivan said the river bank broke on Monday night, at which point his mother-in-law’s house “was three feet in water within seconds”.