Eight minutes.
Eight minutes is all it took for flood waters to course through Midleton's main street this day last year, destroying the ground floors of dozens of businesses and homes.
The area was under a Status Orange rainfall warning at the time, but the speed of the flooding still took many by surprise.
People who walked into coffee shops and restaurants on Main Street for lunch, shaking the rain off their umbrellas, were forced to wade their way back out an hour later.
Shortly after 2pm, Midleton was knee-deep in flood water - the damage had been done.
In business terms, Main Street was worst affected.
But flood waters also flowed through the streets and laneways that run off and behind Main Street.
In many cases, water flooded buildings through the front door and the back, as well as coming up through any surface drains, sinks and toilets on the ground floors.
There was no defence, and they didn't stand a chance.
In a report on the impact of Storm Babet delivered to councillors a week later, Cork County Council estimated that Midleton flooded within seven to eight minutes.
On Main Street, the damage was done principally by the Owenacurra River, which flows into the town from the north.
Upstream, it had an equally devastating impact on dozens of homes.
The flood waters were up to 1.5 metres deep in places.
They rose just as quickly there too, giving families little time to make their escape.
Finally, to compound matters, the Dungourney River, which flows from east to west to the south of Main Street, flooded too.
Parts of Midleton Distillery were flooded and the Midleton Distillery Experience was forced to close. Dozens of homes and businesses were flooded on the southern end of the town too.
Of course, Midleton wasn't the only area to suffer. Flooding also occurred in Glanmire, Glounthane, Carrigtwohill, Whitegate, Cobh, Carrigaline, Ballinhassig and Rathcormac - all in east and north Co Cork.
But Storm Babet on 18 October last year will always be associated most of all with Midleton.
Over 100mm - or four inches - of rainfall fell in the area over the course of 36 hours. This was memorably described at the time as the equivalent of a month's worth of rain.
In Midleton and the surrounding areas, around 600 homes and 300 businesses were flooded, with damage estimated at almost €200 million.
Damian and Laragh O'Brien remember the speed at which the flooding hit. The couple run a menswear shop, Fox & Co., on Main Street, and a women's clothes shop, Flamingo, on Connolly Street.
Both businesses suffered extensive damage by flooding from Storm Babet. Flamingo was forced to close for months to facilitate refurbishment.
"It was pretty frightening, actually, on the day. We just tried to move stock, but it was pointless, because it was coming in so fast."
Damian O'Brien remembers the devastation on Main Street. "The whole of Main Street was just like a river," he says. "We were, I suppose, caught by surprise, like a lot of businesses."
The flooding could hardly have hit at a worse time, given that many businesses - like Fox & Co. - were fully stocked in preparation for the run-up to Christmas.
"The flood waters that came in here came through the front but mostly through the back of the property, to about two-and-a-half feet. [It was] very hard to react to that and by the time it had subsided that evening, the damage that had been done in terms of flood level at two-and-a-half feet was huge," Damian O'Brien says.
Laragh O'Brien was around the corner in Flamingo, dealing with flood waters at her shop on Connolly Street.
"Literally, I'm gong to say within 10/12 minutes, we were up to our knees in water. It happened so quickly," she says.
"There was one other staff member with me that day and we didn't know what was hitting us, really, because it was coming from both sides of the property. It was coming in the back and the front.
"It was pretty frightening, actually, on the day. We just tried to move stock, but it was pointless, because it was coming in so fast. We just had to get to safety really was our number one priority."
Two kilometres away, on the northern edge of the town, residents at Tír Cluain and Knockgriffin were struggling too.
Alan and Orla Mahy's home was one of the worst affected.
They moved into their dormer just before Christmas, 2021.
When Storm Babet arrived, the Owenacurra River which flows towards town, across the narrow laneway from their home, burst its banks. The flood waters were angry and battered their home. By the time they were able to access the house the following day, there was over a metre of water inside.
Like many others in the same position as them, they gathered family and friends and began to clean up the mess.
"The next day we flooded again. So, we had another clean-up and more stuff dumped again. It was just double devastation."
That night they locked up and left, returning the following morning to discover they had been flooded for a second time.
"We think we were the only ones in Midleton to be flooded again. That's not a badge of honour or anything. That's just the reality of our situation," Alan Mahy says.
Orla recalls the clean-up after the first flood: "We cleaned the house that day, took everything out, the floors, everything - everything was loaded up in a skip - and at nine o'clock that night my spirits had lifted. I was like, 'ok, we can move on. We can get through this'."
"Some of the stuff we had saved was in bags down on the ground again, because the place had been cleaned.
"And the next day we flooded again. So, we had another clean-up and more stuff dumped again. It was just double devastation."
Alan and Orla Mahy put the damage to their home at close to €100,000. But, they say, some things were irreplaceable.
They spent the next four-and-a-half months after Storm Babet in rented accommodation, before their house was ready to move into again.
The community in Midleton rallied round those who had been flooded.
State aid also arrived.
Previous floods elsewhere have had an upside, strangely enough: the government response is now slicker and the assistance programmes that have been put in place are easier to access.
The damage caused by Storm Babet was almost exclusively in Co Cork and that vast majority of that damage was done in and around Midleton.
The Department of Social Protection put a Humanitarian Assistance Scheme in place for home owners.
From 18 October last year to the end of September this year, 1,230 payments have been made to 578 individual households under the scheme. The total amount paid out was €3.5 million.
The Irish Red Cross administered two schemes for businesses impacted by Storm Babet: the Emergency Flood Relief Fund and the Enhanced Flood Relief Fund.
Payments were made to businesses in Galway, Louth, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow, but mostly to businesses in Co Cork, with the vast majority to businesses in Midleton.
A total of €9.28m was paid out to 266 business owners.
There were 35 of those who received the maximum payout of €100,000.
And so to the future.
A flood relief scheme was first announced for Midleton after the town was last hit by major flooding in 2015.
It was initially costed at €20m.
Between then and Storm Babet, little progress was made.
But the cost of the scheme jumped two-and-a-half times in those intervening years, to its current estimate of more than €50 million.
If Storm Babet achieved anything positive in Midleton, it is that it focused minds on the delivery of that flood relief scheme, and 2030 is now regarded as a more realistic target, with commissioning by 2031.
In the meantime, interim flood relief measures have been taken which - local people hope - will provide sufficient breathing space to prevent another major flood between now and the delivery of the main flood relief scheme.
Damian O'Brien now represents Midleton and Area Chamber of Commerce on a stakeholders' group which meets quarterly and receives up-dates on the progress of the scheme from the Office of Public Works, Cork County Council and scheme consultants, Arup.
"The other thing we want to do as a business community is, as the Americans say, win hearts and minds," says Damian O'Brien, "so, when the planning does go through for the flood relief scheme, everyone is well informed, that we don't see any objections or, if there are any concerns, that they are properly addressed quickly, so that we can see the scheme delivered."
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