Woman’s lucky escape after tree crushes her car in strong winds
A WOMAN was rushed to hospital after strong winds toppled a tree that crushed her car and left more than 12,000 ESB customers across the country without power yesterday.
The woman was shocked but miraculously escaped serious injury when the tree on Clonliffe Road, Drumcondra, north Dublin was blown down by strong winds at around 9am yesterday.
A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said: “A number of trees came down overnight throughout the city due to high winds. One of them was on the Clonliffe Road.
“As usual any incident resulting from a fallen tree will be examined.”
Meanwhile, ESB crews were hoping to restore electricity by yesterday evening to around 12,000 homes, businesses and farms that were left without power throughout the day yesterday as winds toppled trees and brought down power lines across the country as a status yellow warning remained in place for most areas until 9pm last night.
Around 700 buildings in the Dublin region were also left without electricity.
“The damage is mainly attributed to trees, now in full leaf, causing damage in the high winds,” ESB Networks said in a statement.
Met Éireann had warned the ‘unseasonably strong winds’ would bring potentially “damaging” gusts of between 100-110kmh to some areas throughout the day.
Exposed mountains and hills and coastal areas were the most at risk of being battered by the strongest gusts from the extremely blustery southwest winds.
In Galway, a chimney at the Old Connacht Laundry site on St Helen’s Street collapsed due to the high winds, forcing the closure of the road for a time.
Met Éireann had warned on Thursday that the “unseasonably windy weather” had the “potential for windrelated impacts such as debris from trees and movement of unsecured outdoor items”.
AA Roadwatch also urged motorists to use extreme caution while driving and that “pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and high-sided vehicles are most likely to be blown off-course in high winds”.
The blustery conditions are expected to last throughout today, according to Met Éireann.
Meanwhile, it will be cloudy over Leinster and the northern half of the country today with a mix of sun and showers in the south. Temperatures will remain mild with highs of between 12C-16C but there will be fresh gusty winds and strong to gale-force westerly winds in the northwest, while tomorrow will see an improvement with mostly dry conditions and highs of 15C-20C.
The best of the sunshine tomorrow will be over the southern half of the country.