Unlucky Day 13 without power in Na Forbacha. My elderly parents and myself are huddled yet again in the kitchen where thankfully, a wood burner keeps one room in the house warm. The rest of the house is an icebox.
Only hot water bottles left for hours in the beds bring any semblance of comfort. But it’s still not good enough.
And that could describe the official response to the disaster of Storm Éowyn. The Powercheck website tells us it will be Thursday Feb 6 at 9pm when power returns. It came back on Tuesday. For the first few days they said it would be Sunday, then Wednesday 5. We all lost network the Friday night of the storm, leaving us powerless, without communication and isolated. Some people even lost water. It’s a thin veneer of civilisation between us and the stone age.
I was in the Connemara Coast hotel doing emails when the network dropped at 7.30pm. For the next few days I headed into the Salthill Hotel where I met some familiar faces, musicians, many of whom had simply given up and booked in. I was jealous I couldn’t do the same – nor could many carers or those who simply can’t afford a week in a hotel.
As every camping store in Galway displayed ‘out of camping gas’ signs, we rationed the bottles for our mini-stove, using it for frying while Dad boiled water in pots on top of the wood burner. We all want to do our bit, but I’ll declare it now to every environmentalist and Thunbergian on the west coast – you will take our wood burners and petrol generators from our cold, dead hands.
On day 4 we threw out the last of the rotting food in the fridge – but that afternoon a great friend brought a small generator, previously used for ‘Raves in the forest’. That forest is probably gone now, like much of Barna Wood. But the petrol-powered device was a lifesaver, enabling us to power the fridge, a few lights and TV. We could only watch DVDs, as our Sky dish is somewhere in the Burren - but a modicum of civilization returned.
Internet and network returned a few days later so I no longer needed to move 7km to send a Whatsapp – but I still had to head to Barna to do the laundry, where you guarded your turn to use the machines with your life.
I heard some incredible stories of terrible destruction in East and West Galway as we watched a massive Leylandii tree being chopped up. The Leylandii had toppled into the Super Valu car park during the storm, but it wasn’t the only one. On the approach to Barna from Na Forbacha you could see a tree that had fallen into the garden of a house. magically missing it by mere feet.
And I could see the root of the problem. Or more accurately, the lack of roots. In the 1970s countless people planted Leylandii as hedging, little realizing they could grow into massive, 50ft high monsters if untended. But their roots remained only a few feet deep. A few years back we removed 37 hedge-trees from our garden at great cost – but it was worth it – I don’t think the house would be here.
After the storm, six Leylandii lay across my road in Na Forbacha. Amazingly, local people had removed most of them by midday, but the damage they had caused revealed the other terrible factor - overhead wiring. I’ve never understood how a first-world country like Ireland can be so bad at infrastructure. Even our most beautiful locations are ruined by telegraph poles, ugly transformers and thick black wires criss-crossing the skyline.
I’ve heard all the excuses about underground wiring – that’s all they are. The Government need to spend the Apple money on strengthening our water, power and network so this never happens again. Put it all underground with an easily accessible grate system so there’s no endless digging and patching. Maybe stick in some paving and lighting in while you’re at it? It is ‘Connemara 4’, after all.
Also - legislate against the dreaded Leylandii or any other dangerous tree that can knock out power for two weeks. And maybe instead of slagging Elon Musk, we get his Starlink satellite network in so we can at least communicate?
Houses beside us have had their power back for days, despite seeming to run off the same lines. The ESB are doing their best, I believe. The local community have been incredible, checking in and bringing fuel, despite their own difficulties.
The one positive is how people power came to the fore during this whole fiasco. But we must use what we’ve learned to hold the government to account and ensure they never forget what happened here. The West’s Awake!
Paddy Cullivan is a Historical Entertainer - he’ll be performing ‘Year of the French’ in the Town Hall Theatre October 7th - go to www.paddycullivan.com for tickets to this and all his other shows in 2025.
