The moon was still up over the Burren and the winds had begun to drop when the last life-support machine was switched off at a family farmhouse in south Galway. It was about 6am yesterday, and the generators and sandbags could do no more. For 10 days, the Connolly family had battled to save their mother's home from rising waters. When they were overpowered, in the words of Anita Connolly, it "really did feel like a death".
Standing in wellingtons in mud resembling thick brown fudge, Ms Connolly recounted those last exhausting hours of Tuesday night as a milky sun shone over the turlough that had finally engulfed the farm at Ballinastague.
“Only 24 hours ago, I was quietly confident and thought we might just make it, because we had four generators from the Office of Public Works and the sandbags stacked head-high,” she said. “My brothers were up on the sandbags trying to keep the generators in the thick of the storm, but the wind was so high I was sure one of them would slip.
“When the wind direction changed, the waters turned into waves that kept crashing the generators and, by 6am, we had totally lost the fight . . . At one point I tried calling the gardaí to see if the Army was around, but everyone said that no one was available till 9am,” Ms Connolly added.
“Our neighbours are wonderful, but they were all marooned. We had already moved furniture upstairs, along with bedding, and I tried to take some of my mother’s possessions out for her and pulled down all the blinds.”
The struggle to save the Connolly home had begun on December 17th, when Ms Connolly, her husband and their three young children arrived from London to spend Christmas at home.
The house looks out over the Burren and Caherglissaun, a tidal turlough that rises and falls with the sea levels at Kinvara further west. “The water was on the road 10 days ago, then it began to come into the front garden,”she said. By Christmas Eve, it was time for her mother to leave.
Earlier this week, Ann Connolly (74) had conveyed all the distress and heartache of someone who had links with land stretching back 150 years. Her house, built in 1952, had replaced a family property on slightly lower ground. She was forced to move out when it flooded to 15cm in 2009. This time, water levels are over twice that and up to the windowsills.
“Caherglissaun is no more than a pond in the summer,” her daughter said. “But since 1990, a stream feeding into it with run-off from the Slieve Aughty mountains and Coole has turned into a river in winter. And so when we could hear the current roaring behind the house, we knew there could be trouble.”
Cattle munched away happily in sheds on baled silage as she pointed to a telegraph pole, with only a metre exposed. “That’s where we had the road. If we have to move the animals, it will be another challenge. With access cut off except by boat, it is a 20km round trip to get to the rest of the farm.”
Even as she spoke, OPW staff arrived to take away the last generator. One of the men seemed genuinely shocked, noting that the house, built on a hill, should have been safe.
Local south Galway politicians reflected the frustration of their constituents yesterday, bemoaning an apparent lack of commitment to address repeated flooding. Much of the karst limestone glacial landscape is designated as special areas of conservation.
"We love the wildlife, but we want to be able to live here too," Ms Connolly said. "I'd love it if Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys came here to see what it is like for us now – while the water is high – and not just during the summertime."
