Business owners in Midleton, Co Cork say they are 'devastated' by this week's flash flooding that has caused extensive damage.
They say people in the town are "genuinely very angry" as the flooding was much worse than in December, 2015, when another major flood occurred.
Lisa O'Brien from Monty’s Café
"I can’t find the words to describe it. We were standing inside in the café watching what looked like a waterfall coming in over the floodgate. There was absolutely nothing we could do to stop it.
"I’ve never felt so helpless in all my life.. A lot of damage done, we are still checking it there now. We don’t know the extent of it yet."
Lynda Coriglian from La Trattoria, Main St Midleton
"It’s devastating news for us today, the whole place. I don’t know how it’s going to come back, we just pray that we will get there.
"It came so fast, people were inside having lunch, finishing up. Next minute it came in the back door and it came in like a river. We had to get everyone out as fast as we could, chaos then. The place is destroyed, all the furniture is gone. The whole place is like an eggshell.
"We have no flood insurance. Everyone is going to help today, friends, family, neighbours, customers are all in helping. The businesses are all getting together.
Ria Burgoyne, Say I do bridal boutique Midleton
"We are in business 20 years and we’ve never experienced anything like this before. Our shop is completely destroyed, all our samples, we got no time to save or salvage anything. It’s just devastating. We are trying to sift through everything to see, I don’t even know where to go from here and what we can do.
"The water came up four feet in the shop, all our equipment, electrical, floors, everything - it's completely and utterly destroyed."
Laurie O’Donnell HS2 Midleton (hair salon)
"It’s devastating for a family business. The team are working hard to try get this place up and running again.
"At 12.30pm, we walked outside as my car was parked on the Main Street, it was perfect, at 1pm I opened the door and my feet were submerged. Within six minutes, the water was half way up the door. We barricaded ourselves in with sandbags. The salon was full, there was a pregnant woman inside. It was chaos. We did our best to keep the water out, you could hear the window was creaking and cracking and we knew we had to get out then.
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"We went out the back, we were waist deep in water outside.
"There is upwards of €50,000 worth of damage done here, we spoke to the insurance company this morning and nothing is covered. You wont see a cent go into it from insurance.. I don’t think it has sunk in for us just yet, it’s just crazy.. You barely have words for it."
Joe Rinn, husband of Dearbhaile Burke from Dakota (clothes shop)
Joe said that the family were absolutely devastated, and are dealing with the aftermath.
"The road is wide open, no council, no guards to shut it down. We can’t get skips in, we barely have room to park the vans that we need to get here to try mediate what’s after happening
"The town is in complete disarray. There shouldn’t be anyone here on this street, only business owners to try salvage what they can and repair what they can. There's onlookers, the street is open for cars. We have no help. We rang the Garda station several times, we understand they were flooded and it’s being diverted to Cobh Garda station.
"One of the agricultural contractors took it upon himself to close the street top and bottom, but the side streets, everyone is coming in them and up and down the street. We don’t know what to do."
'A feeling of dread'
Donna Hennessy, owner of Magnolia Midleton Wedding Accessories described a feeling of dread going back into her shop today, as she was not able to get into it on Wednesday.
She said that it's a relatively small shop but has stock of cashmere, silk and leather handbags, and "it's all going to be destroyed".
She said that she had at least €10,000 worth of stock, not to mention the damage done to the electrics.
A neighbour informed her that that the water came in from back and front, and it was "never this bad".
She said that she didn't expect the water to reach her shop as it is not near the river and the water has never come up that far in all the time she has been there, having opened the shop in 2011.
'A violent torrent'
Susan McCarthy, Fine Gael Councillor based in Midleton, who also runs a shop with her husband, said that Wednesday was the worst day she had ever experienced professionally.
"We've never had flooding as high on the Main Street, it happened so fast, in a matter of minutes and businesses just didn’t have time (to react). Those that did have sandbags didn’t even have time to deploy them."
When the flooding first came through, she said she was next door to the shop, and thought a tank had exploded and there was a leak in the roof, but they then saw floods coming in the side of the doors.
She described it as a violent torrent.
Susan then put plastic bags on her feet and tried to make her way through it into next door but staff were trying to move things up higher, but that stock is now damaged, and the drinks and ice cream fridges are "floating". She added that the damage is possibly tens of thousands of euro.
On the Taoiseach visiting, she said that people are "genuinely very angry" as this is worse than 28 December, 2015, when this first happened.
"The flood relief scheme, we were promised a five year plan in 2015, nearly 8 years on from that and it’s not even near construction.
"That makes me angry. Management needs to sit up and do something about this now. The OPW need to pull the finger out here, we cannot have any delays, this is people’s livelihoods and their lives. We have people whose homes were destroyed, we had people trapped in our shop yesterday."
She said that businesses need to be up and running again, but there is devastation on the main street. Describing the scene, she said every single property has debris outside from damaged stock, furniture and boxes.
"It’s an unbelievable sight.. Some businesses will take longer and it’ll depend on whether they took mitigating measures, had flood gates, how badly their stock was affected.
"Not all businesses will be ready for businesses any time soon."
