Climate change will lead to more record-breaking storms, says Mayo County Council official

A SENIOR Mayo County Council official has warned that the devastation brought by Storm Éowyn will be repeated in the future, due to the effects of climate change.

David Mellett, Head of Castlebar Municipal District (MD), told the January meeting of Castlebar Municipal District that Mayo County Council responded to more than 250 calls at over 200 locations in Castlebar MD after the recent storm.

These callouts pertained to roads, clearing trees, damage to houses and other issues, including one incident where council staff worked with the Civil Defence to deliver an oxygen tank to a medically vulnerable person.

Mellett described the storm as ‘a record-breaking weather event’ that caused ‘unprecedented damage’ to the county. The storm left thousands of households and businesses in Mayo without power and water, many for over a week.

“These are the type of events that climate projections are saying we are to expect more frequently,” said Mellett.

“And when we talk about climate action a lot of the focus is on mitigation, which is absolutely vital to try to reduce our carbon emissions – but the second element of climate action is adapting and having to adapt, unfortunately, to the changing climate.

“It’s important to note as well, what the climate projections do say if we continue with the emissions – and I don’t want to get into this at this stage – we will get to a level of severe events that we will not be able to adapt to. Some of these events are so severe that no matter how much adaptation planning you do, there are going to be impacts. But we have to prepare for how we deal with those impacts.”

LESSONS

MR MELLETT thanked the fire services, Coillte and the various community groups who assisted the local authority during their response to the storm, adding that there is ‘months of work ahead’ to tidy up the debris. He also acknowledged that there are ‘definitely lessons to be learned’ from the damage caused by the storm.

John Condon, Director of Services for Castlebar Municipal District, paid tribute to individuals and the community groups who checked in on elderly neighbours and made their facilities available to the community.

“If all of those things didn’t happen, the people of this county would be a lot worse off today than they are now at the moment,” he said.

During the meeting, elected representatives vented their frustration about Mayo’s preparedness for severe weather events.

Mr Condon agreed the county’s water and electricity infrastructure would have to be strengthened to prevent widespread outages from reoccurring in the event of a similar storm.