Dramatic events are noteworthy for the trauma they visit upon our lives. We are stopped in our tracks by the photographs in our newspapers and the gripping images that television brings into our living rooms. What often gets lost is the courage, heroism and sheer professionalism of those whose job it is to cope and help others at such times. Before considering why the recent appalling weather has overwhelmed so many of the State's roads, towns, villages and farmland, there should be praise for the members of the fire services, the ambulance crews, the civil defence volunteers and the many ordinary people who have helped neighbours and strangers caught in the flood waters.
That said, there is surely something wrong when a few days' downpour, albeit some of the heaviest rains of recent years, driven also by ferocious winds, can drown so many homes and bring great swathes of several counties to a soggy halt. Is this the work of God or man? Or is it just Nature being naturally unpredictable?
The answer seem to be a bit of all three. Catastrophes of nature have inflicted themselves on humankind long before scientists identified global warming. Extraordinary storms, floods, earthquakes, volcanos and the like are as old as the planet. The question which troubles now is whether nature is changing, notably because of global warming? Scientists agree on the phenomenon of global warming but are divided as to whether this in itself is causing what seem to be changing weather patterns that constitute an altering climate. One thing is for sure, unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, global warming will continue with consequences that cannot accurately be guaged.
What is already clear, however, is that people throughout the world exhibit a general unwillingness to change their living habits in such a way as might help preserve the ozone layer. This is as true here as it is in developing nations where people aspire to the sort of material comforts enjoyed in Europe, America and Australia.
As Frank McDonald reports elsewhere in today's paper, much development in recent years in this State has gone on in reckless disregard to the consequences. Why, for instance, have local authorities allowed new housing estates to be build in places known to be liable to flooding? It is not good enough to quip, as one local government official did in the wake of Hurricane Charlie in 1986, that people who chose to live beside rivers must expect to get their feet wet every now and again. How can it be that a new road, the M4, is flooded when the old road it replaced remains passable? Farmers too have sculpted the land in such a way that flood waters, which in the past seeped down to the water table, are channelled as fast as possible into rivers unable to cope with sudden downpours.
Yesterday in the Dail, the Minister of State for the Environment, Mr Bobby Molloy, announced what he termed a humanitarian aid package to those affected by the flooding. It would be generous, he said, but details were still to be worked out. Clearly, those whose homes and businesses have been damaged by recent events will welcome such assistance. However, unless planners pay more attention to the laws of nature (flood impact studies are a good starting point), taxpayers will be paying for bad decisions more and more in the future.