Flooding has highlighted deficiencies

Sarah Saunderson • Published 26 Nov 2009 09:00 0 Comments

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What a week it has been. Last Thursday, the Impartial Reporter warned of flooding over the weekend but no-one really imagined it would get quite so bad.

Families and communities are isolated and cut off, farmland in the southern part of the county in particular is under many feet of water and school children are being educated in temporary accommodation or having to be carried through floods to get to the classroom.

What comes out from our reports of local people's experiences of the flooding has been anger and desperation. In Boho, the school principal has complained of being "ping-ponged" between agencies as she tried to get some form of help for staff and pupils dealing with terrible flooding leading to the school.

In rural areas of Lisnaskea, people have been without post or bin collections for a week, farmers are despairing, concerned about their animals, unsure of the state of their land when the many feet of flood water eventually dissipates and wondering how will help when the clean-up eventually takes place.

People in particular are annoyed that in their isolation, cut off by the rising waters, no-one from the relevant agencies has sought to contact them or given them any information on how to cope with the situation they find themselves in. People are feeling let down by the authorities and unsupported.

A wider issue has also emerged in the midst of all this -- how Enniskillen is completely unable to cope with the extra traffic brought through the town as a result of roads across the county being flooded. The traffic is moving unbearably slowly and the inadequacies of the traffic light system at Gaol Square have been laid bare.

On Tuesday, a problem with the traffic lights at the junction between Derrychara Road and Dublin Road left scores of people holed up in the cars in the Tesco car park, not moving an inch for at least an hour and a half. Calls were made to the police who said they would send personnel if available but callers were also told it was a Roads Service issue due to malfunctioning traffic lights. Police eventually arrived to direct traffic almost an hour later. By this stage the many people stuck in the car park and up Derrychara Road were at breaking point. This was on an ordinary Tuesday evening. Goodness knows what horrors we face in the pre-Christmas rush. It goes to show that even with the most innocuous problem, Enniskillen just shuts down.

The extra traffic brought on by the floods elsewhere has shown the town will not cope with additional traffic brought by any further developments. If down the line schools do join together and are on a bigger site, the infrastructure just will not cope.

Tinkering at the edges is no longer working. This county needs serious investment and the southern by-pass is just the place to start.

This article appeared in Impartial Reporter 26 Nov 09

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