WHY WASN’T IT A RED ALERT?
Not our fault insists Met Éireann... it was NOT a ‘Red’ storm
Two killed. 186,000 without power. The ploughing devastated. Gusts of 146kph. The public ‘unprepared’. Yet our forecasters insist they were right to issue only ‘orange’ storm warnings...
MET Éireann has defended its decision not to issue its highest warning for Storm Ali which wreaked havoc across much of the country yesterday.
Although the storm left two people dead, 186,000 customers without power, 75 flights grounded in Dublin, the Luas suspended, the Ploughing Championships cancelled, cars smashed and hundreds of trees down, the national forecaster said that a Red weather warning was not merited.
Such warnings are reserved for ‘severe’ weather, Met Éireann stated. At its peak, Storm Ali brought gusts of 147kph at Mace Head weather station in Co. Galway, with mean wind speeds of 85kph. According to the Met Éireann website, a Red weather warning requires mean wind speeds in excess of 80kph and gusts in excess of 130kph: but despite this, Met Éireann said these wind speed recordings were brief and neighbouring weather stations – in Galway and Mayo – didn’t record similar levels. So Met Éireann said it was justified in not issuing a Red Weather Alert.
‘There was nowhere else in the country that had Red level winds, only in Mace Head,’ a forecaster said. ‘Elsewhere in Galway they were only up to the Yellow and early into the Orange.’
Meanwhile, one forecaster, Joanna Donnelly, told RTÉ News last night that while Met Éireann was prepared for the severity of the storm, the public were not.
Tánaiste Simon Coveney also accepted that while the State was prepared for what was coming ‘perhaps the public weren’t’. Met Éireann’s spokesman told the Irish Daily Mail that people may need to be ‘re-educated’ on the meaning of Orange and Yellow alerts.
‘Yellow and Orange warnings are of themselves significant weather events,’ he said. ‘Maybe people need to be re-educated to the fact that these can cause damage in their own right.’ He added that the reason so many trees had come down was because their roots had been ‘compromised’ during the summer drought.
Met Éireann said that in many of the 17 counties where an Orange warning was issued, the winds didn’t actually meet this severity. However, the forecaster is likely to face calls to revamp its warning system in the light of the difference between what the forecasters and the State expected, and what the public believed would happen.
Across the country people complained that they had not felt prepared for the severity of what was coming, with many comparing the impact of Storm Ali to that of Storm Ophelia.
At the Ploughing Championships in Screggan, Co. Offaly, stallholders made it clear they had not been expecting the level of damage that was done. As stalls and stands were ripped to shreds, the championships were cancelled for the first time in their history.
The storm also claimed two lives. Swiss woman Elvira Ferraii, 56, died when the caravan she was staying in was blown down a coastal bank in Co. Galway, while in Co. Armagh, a man in his 20s was hit by a falling tree while working in a forest.
Over 186,000 homes and businesses were without electricity as power lines toppled, while roads were blocked by fallen trees and flights were cancelled.
The Government was yesterday accused of being unprepared for the storm, with Fianna Fáil questioning if the National Emergency Co-ordination Committee should have met in advance of the storm as it had with Storm Ophelia.
‘The conditions seem to be recently worsening and the level of preparedness does not seem as effective as for similar storms in the past,’ deputy leader Dara Calleary said. However, Minister Regina Doherty insisted that plans were ‘adequate’, adding that it had been handled by the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management.
‘Preparations have been made. Weather warnings have been issued in recent days,’ she claimed, describing it as ‘something that we prepared for in recent days’.
She said the national director had been meeting daily with Met Éireann for the past week in preparation for Storm Ali. ‘We can only do what we are doing, which is responding to something that we prepared for in recent days’, she said.
Speaking outside the Dáil, Tánaiste Simon Coveney suggested the public may be suffering from ‘storm fatigue’.
He said: ‘I think sometimes when people don’t see a Red warning, they assume everything will be fine.’
He added: ‘If you look at the preparations that are there and the pace at which the ESB, in particular, will be responding to the huge challenge of 180,000 households being without power and trying to get them all back within a couple of days, you realise that actually the infrastructure of the State was prepared for this. Perhaps the public weren’t though,’ he said.
UCC climatologist Kieran Hickey told the Mail that the warnings were sufficient and standard for a winter storm.
‘The forecasts were pretty spot-on. I think people were just taken aback by how much damage was actually done’, he said.
‘There is a little bit of warning fatigue,’ he said but added that as lives were lost ‘we should certainly never be complacent when the winds get up to that sort of level’.
In anticipation of the storm on Tuesday, Met Éireann issued an Orange warning valid from 5am to 1pm the following day. It warned of particularly strong winds in Atlantic coastal areas up to 110 and 120kph.
They advised ‘extreme caution’ in coastal areas of Connacht and Donegal. A spokesman said factors such as duration, direction and the possibility of spreading are examined before a coloured warning is issued.
Across the country a large number of trees fell victim to the ravages of the winds damaging homes and business and obstructing road ways. In north Dublin neighbours were stranded after a 30 foot tree fell outside their homes blocking entry. Comment – Page 12 jane.fallon.griffin@dailymail.ie
‘Maybe they need to be re-educated’ Accused of being unprepared