A CORK City councillor has called on the ESB to introduce a graded system of warnings to indicate the seriousness of flooding following the November floods which caused tens of millions of euro worth of damage in Cork city.
Fine Gael councillors John Buttimer said that while the ESB had issued warnings both before November 19th and on the day that there was going to be flooding in Cork, the system failed to give any indication of the seriousness or scale of flooding that householders were facing.
“If you look at the flood that happened on November 19th, it wasn’t caused by the tide – it was caused by the release of the water from the dam so we need to be more specific in the type of warnings that we are giving. Is it tidal or dam discharge and where will be affected?
“We should be able to give a graded warning system – say on a scale of one to five where one would be a minimal flood warning right up to five which would be catastrophic which was potentially what we had on November 19th,” he said.
Mr Buttimer said the ESB give out so many flood warnings during the course of a year regarding flooding from the Lee that people become somewhat inured to them especially as they didn’t indicate the scale of the possible flooding and where exactly is likely to be affected.
Earlier this week, Cork city manager Joe Gavin presented a report to the council on its response to warnings it had received from the ESB.
Mr Gavin said that at 11.30am on November 19th, the ESB at Inniscarra notified the city council that it would be increasing its discharge levels from the dam. At midday, Cork City Council contacted businesses along the Carrigrohane Road and advised them of the possibility of flooding, he said.
