Villages and hamlets in south Mayo turned into ‘islands’

Katya Kenny has been relying on tractor transport to get to work over the last few days, since south Mayo set a record for Storm Desmond’s rainfall.

“My house in Ballyglass is okay, but I’m blocked in on all sides,” she says. A five-minute car drive to her job in Mellotte’s Bar in The Neale is now a daily expedition through flooded fields.

With the great western lakes of Corrib and Mask full to brimming, hamlets and villages such as Ballyglass and Ballyrourke are like "islands" now, her neighbour Maura Morrin says.

No one remembers Cong river, flowing out from Lough Mask, being quite so high.

“The ground just cannot take any more ... this is far worse than 2009,” says Mrs Morrin, who husband, Scottie, was out on horseback checking the floods.

Relentless rise In Cong village, Martha Ryan spent the week watching the relentless rise of the river, lapping over Abbey bridge and into Abbey Street.

"Timber lorries passing through to the mill were driving water under the door, and so we rang our local councillor, Damien Ryan, and the local authority, and sandbags were sent," she says.

By Wednesday evening, the “street” had become a stream, and had to be closed to traffic, while water was bubbling up through every manhole.

“We managed to contain the water to one area, with the help of the sandbags, but my mother-in-law, who has been here since 1968, never remembers it as bad as this,” Ms Ryan said.

Paramedic Tim Clesham, who has been associated with the Red Cross in south Mayo, paid tribute to an enormous community effort by people like local contractor David Holleran from Creevagh.

“He turned up with his digger at the weekend when my son’s house was invaded with water and he spent 12 hours creating a bank around it... a phenomenal effort,” Mr Clesham said.

“We have floods now in places that were never known for this before, and it is the worst that I’ve seen here,” he said.

An unfinished canal route, started in 1848 to link Mask and Corrib, is now relieving some of the pressure in the narrow isthmus of land between the two great lakes .

"That canal route is normally empty and you'd walk along its bed during the summer," Petersburg Outdoor Education Centre manager Trish Walsh of Clonbur said.

Sinkholes

The limestone area of sinkholes and springs and turloughs is characterised by enormous underground chambers and caverns, which are now full, she explained – with one of best known being Poll na gColum or the “Pigeon Hole”.

“In periods of low precipitation, the water disappears from view, but conversely, when there are no surface drainage channels, the only place for water to go is into the lakes,” Ms Walsh said.

“There is a massive resurgence of water in Cong and in some ways it is remarkable that Cong itself is not under water,” she noted.

“In my 25 years of living in the area I have never experienced this extent of flooding,” she said.

“Nature will find its course and the water will drop. But is global warming on an international scale rattling our local comfort zones?”