County wakens to snow surprise

Rodney Edwards • Published 18 Feb 2010 10:49 Comments 1 Comment

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UP to six inches of snow fell in Fermanagh yesterday morning, bringing parts of the county to a standstill.

Enniskillen, Kesh, Irvinestown and Lack were some of the worst-hit areas with reports of several minor accidents.

Treacherous conditions made driving hazardous. In Bellanaleck a lorry jackknifed close to The Moorings Restaurant on the Derrylin Road while in Trillick a car skidded off the road.

Recovery driver Alan Graham had ten call-outs before midday on Wednesday: "We've been mostly in and out of Enniskillen. Cars overturned, cars in hedges, that kind of thing. A lot of people are finding it difficult to control their cars on the snow and ice. It's dangerous enough, you know," he said.

Mona Bermingham who works for the Quinn Group endured a two hour journey from Enniskillen to Derrylin yesterday, a journey which would usually take 30 minutes.

"With snow fall of 3-4 inches when I left home and no grit on the roads I was unable to exceed 10mph for a large part of my journey. This was further hampered when a lorry jack knifed in the snow outside Bellanaleck resulting in a long tail back. It took me two hours to complete a 30 minute journey," she said.

Lynne Phair who also works for the Quinn Group in Derrylin was unable to get to work for three and a half hours due to the weather.

"My route to work was completely impassable at 7.30am this morning. There was no way my car was going to make it down Garvary Hill safely and so I had no choice but to turn around and wait for the conditions to improve before travelling to work," she said.

Some motorists have been critical of the Road Service, complaining that many roads around Fermanagh weren't salted in time for rush hour traffic yesterday morning.

One man said: "The roads are a bloody disgrace, they're like a bottle. What's the point of paying rates when in times like this, nothing gets done? Some of the roads are that bad they should be closed. It's a disgrace," he said.

But Road Service's Henry Robinson said his men weren't expecting the heavy snowfall and did all they could to assist motorists.

"No, we didn't know it was coming at all. We thought it was just going to be a bit of frost. The snow started at about 4.45am and our snow ploughs were immediately sent out onto the road. The difficulty about salting is the rush hour in the morning, it creates delays. It was actually snowing that heavy at 5am that it was filling up completely again behind the snow ploughs. It was coming down very hard. The other problem we had was that some of our men found it difficult getting into work because of the snow. So we had to get other men in from other parts of the county for additional help. But we're doing our best. We will be monitoring the weather for the days ahead," said Mr. Robinson.

A number of schools were also forced to close yesterday, including: St Joseph's Primary School, Ederney, Jones Memorial Primary School, Enniskillen, Killyhommon Primary School, Boho, Florencecourt Primary School, Holy Trinity Primary School, Enniskillen, and Tempo Primary School.

The weather forecast for the day ahead suggests there will be little change tomorrow with the frost slowly melting away to leave a dry and bright day with some sunny spells. Winds will continue to be light. Saturday and Sunday will be a mixture of bright or sunny intervals, with some light snow flurries.

This article appeared in Impartial Reporter 18 Feb 10

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Tictoc
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Feb 19, 16:38
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Henry may not have known it was coming, but a friend of mine told me several days before it happened. Fancy that. Maybe she watches the weather forecast!

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