“Se questo fosse Dublino, ci sarebbe una guerra totale”: i lettori senza potere o acqua condividono le loro storie

Absolutely right. Although if it was Dublin, fixing the problem would likely take significantly less time and effort. They’d be fixing one line and seeing hundreds of homes restored, rather than fixing one line and seeing dozens of homes restored

Edit: also, I understand the frustration at the government, but I really don’t think forcing them all into a room would actually achieve anything. The problems that are slowing things are logistics and man power. They’ve already called in foreign support, to help with manpower, but short of going out themselves with chainsaws and trucks to clear access ways and debris, there isn’t much they can do. The real question for the government is how can we help people in the aftermath – lost earnings, or subsidies for those impacted, helping with repair costs, infrastructure improvements, dealing with insurers – these are the things the government can actually help with, and that’s what they should be under pressure to address

“All out war” hyperbole

Was delighted to hear all of the infrastructure experts on Joe Duffy yesterday explaining how they could have done a better job. One woman suggested the government buy a turbine and two solar panels for every house on the west coast.

So one this storm has shown, if it needed confirmation, is that people are dumb.

It turns out building a house in the arsehole of nowhere might not be the greatest idea when a storm hits and power goes out

Especially when you consider a lot of the people living in these areas have no reason to live in that location only they wanted to build a huge f**k off house

There is a distinct lack of sympathy for people who have lost power from those who didn’t. All this ‘what could the government do?’ brigade really should count their lucky stars that it didn’t happen to them. But to answer the question – what could the government do?

• ⁠they declared a climate emergency in 2019: did it have provision for improving disaster response? Of course it didn’t. Why no one in the media made this point is beyond me
• ⁠these storms are regular and frequent occurrences every winter. We should not be losing power for more than a few hours as a result of regular and frequent occurrences: it should be prepared for by the state and resources ready to go in the aftermath of such events
• ⁠case in point: look how many power lines are down simply because huge trees were allowed to grow out of control right beside them. This is the ESB’s job to stop this from happening. Why didn’t they?
– if the Dail was sitting the Government could be held to account for the decisions that they have made which have led us to this point. Without that, they are making do with a few photo ops, a few soundbites on media which never really presses them too hard and they’ll kick the can down the road until the next news cycle

And that’s why Dublin keep winning the All Ireland nearly every year, No fight in them culchies, You Don’t hear Kerry people moaning either.. Just the usuals Mayo and cavan folks.. and that’s why they will always be losers.

I’m a strong believer in the notion that two things can be true at once.

Firstly, as a country we do need to improve our climate change adaptation and look at things like better disaster response and perhaps increasing resilience in things like the power grid. However, we need to have a serious discussion about what all of this would cost. For example if we wanted to underground much if not all of the power grid it would be a tremendously expensive undertaking. What are we prepared to sacrifice in order to do this?

Secondly, we must acknowledge that Ireland has one of the lowest population densities of any country in Europe. This translates into a lot of single homes and small communities in isolated areas. You simply cannot expect the same level of service or speed of recovery as you would get in a major urban centre.

One off housing doesn’t help their issues

Ya Stick everyone in Dublin so with its endless supply of accommodation.

I don’t think some commenters here realize, there are whole strings of towns and villages with no power, we’re not just talking about some “one off down a boreen”. 

Storms like this are only going to get more frequent, and there were measures we could have taken in advance of this to mitigate the damage. There are questions to be asked about what could be and what could have been done better.

People here showing exactly how correct the title is. Apparently everyone outside the M50 lives in a one off house in a forest on a remote mountain.

Seen some guys in a town of 5000 bucketing water out of a river yesterday as they have no water for 4 days. Could you imagine the outrage if there was no power and a queue to scoop water out of the dodder a week after a storm.