A clean-up began in Killarney, Co Kerry, on Friday morning after “unprecedented” flash flooding overwhelmed much of the town and its surroundings.
The heavy downpours led to the closure of all main roads in and around Killarney. A number of vehicles that became stuck had to be removed by the fire service.
Heavy rain began around 5pm on Thursday but the worst of the downpour occurred between 7pm and 8pm with about 30mm recorded at Muckross House weather station outside the town.
It recorded a total of 57mm in under four hours, akin to a red level alert.
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The N71 Muckross Road, the main tourist road to Killarney National Park, was flooded, as was the N22 Cork-to-Killarney Road at Pike Hill.
Homes on New Street as well as domestic garages and houses in the village of Fossa outside Killarney were affected with water chutes and downpipes overwhelmed.
While local businesses and homes were counting the cost of the flash flooding on Thursday evening, they were also counting their blessings.
President of Killarney Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Johnny McGuire said a downpour of even 15 minutes longer would have been “catastrophic” and Killarney would have been like Middleton in 2023, when the Cork town suffered enormous damage.
The geography of Killarney, located in a bowl, along with the long dry summer, had created the “perfect storm” for flash flooding.
The dry conditions meant “everything ran off the land down into the town”, McGuire said.
He was in the middle of clearing the back yard of his restaurant and craft shop, Bricín, on High Street. A flat roof in the premises had been damaged by the torrential rain.
Apart from the Killarney Sports and Leisure Centre on the Park Road, no business had to close and most had cleared their premises by the afternoon.
However, houses and doctors surgeries and other premises on New Street were affected and on College Street sandbags were distributed for the first time ever.
A number of electric cars were caught in the floods and at least one was badly damaged in the Countess Road area.
Two months of drought meant the ground was like iron, McGuire said.
A normal Killarney summer would have meant the ground was like a sponge and it would have soaked up the torrential rain.
“Last evening everything ran into the town in that one catastrophic hour,” he said.
Kerry Fianna Fáil TD Michael Cahill whose office is on New Street said his focus now is financial assistance for homes and businesses.
Cahill said he was in “direct contact” with Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary regarding the provision of hardship payments for individuals and families who have been impacted by the flooding, and supports for businesses.
Cahill also paid tribute to the emergency services, Kerry County Council staff and all those who responded to the flooding.
The fire service and gardaí worked to clear the roads of traffic while the Civil Defence was called in to deliver sandbags.
Water was pumped from a number of areas including the railway bridge on Park Road and Woodlawn Cross.
The mayor of Killarney, Cllr John O’Donoghue, described it as the worst flooding in a lifetime.
“Killarney got lashed with rain,” he said, noting that other parts of the county remained dry.
Speaking on RTÉ’s David McCullagh show, he said some people had to abandon their cars after they drove into water not realising how deep it was. He also said he received calls last night from “quite upset elderly people saying that ‘there’s water flowing in my door, I’ve never seen it before and I’ve lived here all my life, what can I do’, so very, very scary times.”
The county was not under a weather warning and the area is not typically prone to flooding.
Paul Neary, director of services with Kerry County Council, said: “We had no indication. There was nothing to indicate this was coming. Effectively the skies opened.”
The town’s drainage system was overwhelmed in places. Leaves and twigs that had built up over the dry summer were washed down and caused blockages.
However, council crews managed to clear the system and as soon as the rainfall stopped, the drainage system worked, he said.
Meanwhile in Dublin, some areas of the capital were flooded on Thursday night, including parts of Cabra in Dublin 7.
Footage posted on X showed flooding on Offaly Road, next to Christ the King Boys National School and church. Local Green Party councillor Feljin Jose said the water in Cabra had receded on Friday morning.
Many of the drains in the area date from the 1930s, he said, and “cannot cope with the amount of water” during periods of heavy rainfall, he said.
He also said that much of the greenery in Cabra has been tarmacked over and “with more and more extreme weather events on the horizon, we need places for the water to soak and drain naturally into the ground.”
On Friday, the council said that rainfall monitoring stations in the city recorded up to 28mm of rain in a single hour, while more than 54mm fell within three hours at Arbour Hill in Dublin 7, “representing an event of a scale rarely experienced in Dublin in recent years”.
It said a number of locations were impacted by surface water flooding, including parts of Cabra, the North Circular Road, Glasnevin, Parkgate Street and Chapelizod.
Dublin City Council said the majority of reported incidents were addressed overnight, with follow-up inspections and assessments continuing on Friday.
