UP TO 50,000 homes mainly in the west and northwest experienced power outages during Thursday’s storm, the ESB said yesterday.
At the height of the storm some 10,000 customers were left without power in the worst hit areas of Galway, Sligo, Donegal and Athlone where high winds felled trees, damaging power lines and blocking roads.
The stormy conditions also caused isolated outages in pockets of north Dublin, including Portmarnock, Cabra and Howth.
Last night, ESB crews were still attempting to restore power to 750 homes on the Sligo/Leitrim border in and around the village of Dromahair.
The poor weather also brought flooding to many parts of the midlands, the north and northwest.
A number of secondary roads in north Clare and south Galway remained flooded and impassable.
The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) warned that many areas were completely unprepared to deal with flooding, and accused the Government of inaction in relation to flood prevention measures.
IFA flood project team chairman Michael Silke said just two days’ rain could cause flooding around the Shannon equal to levels experienced 12 months ago.
“If you look at the flood that’s here today, you look behind and you see thousands of acres of land and that’s literally after two days’ rain,” he said.
“If it was to stop raining it would take at least a month for those waters to recede. If we get two more days’ rain, we are going to have a serious, serious flood on a par with last year.”
Extra powers given to the Office of Public Works have failed to produce results, the organisation claimed.
Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) claims to have reconnected some 22,000 customers in the North who suffered blackouts during the height of the poor weather. At one point more than 6,000 subscribers were without power across Northern Ireland. By early yesterday that number had been reduced to just 600 and these were gradually reconnected throughout the day.
All six counties were affected from Fermanagh in the west to Down and the greater Belfast area along the Irish Sea coast. Enniskillen and the south Antrim areas were the worst affected.
While the worst may be over, Met Éireann has predicted further showers in the north and west today which would become heavy and thundery later.
