Cork County Council awaiting details of humanitarian fund to assist families impacted by Storm Éowyn

Senior officials at Cork County Council are awaiting the confirmation of details of a humanitarian fund that would assist families impacted by Storm Éowyn over the weekend, the council’s director of services, Niall Healy, told yesterday’s council meeting.

Mr Healy was giving a report on the response of the council to the status red weather event. It hit Cork late on Thursday night and into the early hours of Friday morning, bringing winds of record strength.

The Community Response Forum structure, which was used during the pandemic, was reactivated to deal with weather events, Mr Healy said. Representatives of the council, as well as of various other bodies, such as local development companies, the Department of Social Protection, Rural Link, the Older Peoples’ Council, the IFA, and others had met on Sunday, and would be meeting daily until the end of this week, he said.

“It’s a very important forum, and now we’re holding daily meetings just to identify if there are any gaps or vulnerabilities or humanitarian needs that may exist out there,” he said.

“We’re very conscious that, for some people in more isolated rural communities, that it could be later this week or the weekend before their power supplies are restored and, for those people, there are impacts in terms of not just power supply, but the water supply as well.

“So we are asking, if there are particular needs out there, that people would contact us on our emergency phone number: That’s 021 4800048.

“That line remains in place day and night, 24/7, between now and the end of the week.”

In the council report, an account was given of Storm Éowyn’s impact throughout the county. The winds peaked during the early hours of Friday, January 24, and by 10am the warning had dropped to status orange.

“This enabled the response to commence, and crews went about clearing roads and removing trees and other debris,” the report stated.

“There were trees down right throughout the county and reports of multiple properties without power, telecoms, and some with water issues.”

The report detailed work undertaken over the weekend and pointed out that the clean-up was hampered on Sunday by another storm, with status yellow wind and rain warnings for Cork, a weather event that led to further reports of trees down and potholes on many roads.

Fianna Fáil councillor Gillian Coughlan was full of praise for Mr Healy’s “extraordinarily holistic and all-encompassing report”.

“I think it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge that this is on top of all the rest of the work that has to be done by the local authority,” she said.

“As well as the physical response, the trees, the roads, our engineers answering the phones at all hours of day or night, there are administrative burdens and management burdens behind this.”