GeneralGarretat Bray’s‘battlezone’

September 1986

WITH army trucks parked on sludge-covered roads, soldiers trooping here and there and shattered homes on every side, Little Bray might have been mistaken for a war zone last Friday afternoon.

Three days after the impact of Hurricane Charlie, residents, traders and local businesses were still fighting round the clock to repair the damage.

and if the area was like a battle zone, Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald fitted the role of a general visiting the front lines to speak to the casualties.

Accompanied by a high-powered team which included Ministers Liam Kavanagh and Gemma Hussey and a host of officials and aides, he toured the area for three hours.

Garret being Garret, statistics figures prominently as he spoke to shattered residents.

More than once he explained that the area had been deluged by an extraordinarily heavy rainfall of eight inches where the previous highest record had been five and a half.

Matters had been made worse by an enormous spillage at the Paddock Lakes, upstream on the Dargle near Enniskerry.

He pointed out that the DArgle was the most difficult river in the country because its short length gave very little warning.

‘In Kilkenny, they got four hours warning of flooding from the river,’ he noted. ‘Nobody can promise this will not happen again,’ he said, as if to highlight the hurricane’s exceptional nature.

For many of those he spoke to, this was obviously cold comfort as they complained that the area had not been given enough notice.

At Seapoint Estate, Rory and Vera O’Connor told how exactly 23 inches of water had destroyed carpets and furnishings in their home while neighbour Declan McGrath explained that the banks fo rthe nearby Dargle were three feet lower than they should have been. ‘We would have been okay but for that,’ he claimed.

Across the road, Mrs Bernadette Hurley complained that only 31 minutes warning had been given, while also in Seapoint, retired independent Roscommon TD Jack McQuillan, confided in his former Dail colleague that the local council ‘were the most incompetent crowd I’ve ever seen in my life.’

Down at the harbour Gemma Hussey pulled at the Taoiseach’s arm. ‘Do you see that pile of stuff like sawdust over there, Taoiseach? That used to be boats.’

In the heard of the disaster area at Lower Dargle Road, reaction to the mud-spattered Taoiseach ranged from residents’ accounts of how they were down but no out, to outright hostile criticism.

Marie Fitzgerald hit out at the lack of warning about flooding to which Dr Fitzgerald conceded that some better system would have to be devised.

A garda spokesperson said that they don’t know the circumstances of the incident but that, following another incident in the area last week, they are conducting a thorough investigation.

Last week in the early hours of the morning a woman was attacked on the Greenan Road, Ballygannon. She was walking home when she was approached by a group of youths demanding money. They pushed her to the ground but she bravely fought them off before they fled.