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HEUSTON STATION IS relatively empty at 6.30 in the morning. The 7am train to Cork is on time and heading from platform five, according to the departures board.
When I try to board the train on platform five, an Irish Rail worker stops me.
“The train is actually going from platform two,” he says. “Sorry about that. It always goes from platform five. But this is unprecedented.”
This is not the first time someone says the word unprecedented, in a day where I get to see how Cork was one of the counties hit hardest by Storm Ophelia.
When the train is at a standstill for the guts of half an hour at Charleville, the driver comes over the intercom and says simply: “Sorry for the delay, it’s because of Storm Ophelia.”
Counting the cost
Ophelia hit Cork hard.
Over 20 major roads in Cork were still closed this morning as people travelled to work around the county. ESB’s Powercheck showed numerous clusters of areas without power, with no estimate on when it would be returned.
Trees were still down and blocking roads all over the city, as dozens of city council crews worked round the clock to prioritise and remove debris from the roads.
“There’s some very serious large scale damage, and an awful lot more small scale damage done,” Sinn Féin TD for Cork South Central, Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire told TheJournal.ie.
Wind speeds reached over 120kph in this part of Cork yesterday, but it was a bright, sunny day in Douglas today. However the after effects of Storm Ophelia were still visible.
Efforts are already underway to fix the roof at the hall in the Douglas school, with dramatic footage shared on social media showing the roof flying off in the fierce winds.
With no pupils in schools across the country for a second day, workers were busy trying to shift the wreckage on the school grounds.
The clean up begins after the roof blew off the hall at Douglas Community School in Cork #ophelia pic.twitter.com/cypfyantzU
— Sean Murray (@SeanMJourno) October 17, 2017
Down the road in the (re-opened) local Tesco, the community was still reeling from yesterday’s storm.
“We were genuinely scared,” one woman said, who was with her two young children. “The wind started battering the windows and I thought it was going to cave in. And then we lost the power. We don’t know how long it’ll be gone for.”
An elderly woman said that she had heard the warning about the storm on Sunday evening.
“I wasn’t able to go the shops,” she said. “But I went out my back garden at one stage, and I can say I never felt wind like it. Unprecedented they called it. They were right.”
A taxi driver tells me he braved the elements and went out to work at 6am.
“It was just incredible,” he said. “The winds were just crazy. I only went out for a few hours. I knew when I started seeing debris on the roads it was time to come home.
I went out again after it cleared at around 7pm. By then, with so much after falling on the roads, it was like driving through a war zone.
A worker in a café closer to the city centre said: “It was unbelievable. The house across from me – the roof fell off.
The roads were littered. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was unprecedented. I stepped out for a minute from the café and thought I heard thunder, and sure I was fighting them all to get back in first.
About 15 minutes up the road from Douglas, over a dozen workers were busying themselves at Turner’s Cross stadium, with Cork City due to play a pivotal football game with Derry City this evening.
Yesterday, the storm blew one of the stands apart. The game was given the all-clear to be played but, at around 1.30pm today, the debris was far from cleared.
One of the worst affected roads was on Centre Park Road, on the south side of the city.
“Here, around 20% of all the fallen trees in Cork city fell,” Deputy Lord Mayor Fergal Dennehy tells TheJournal.ie.
Just after midday today, some of the roughly 30 trees that fell had been cleared, but there were still a significant number blocking the road.
Some the trees here were decades old, with strong roots, but were easily overturned by Ophelia.
This was one example of how the city was affected. One of the workers helping to clear the debris said that it was the third place he’d been to do the same job since 6am this morning.
“We’ve been prioritising,” he said. “It’s all about doing our bit. Get the place back up and running.”
Clean up efforts
Back in Deputy Lord Mayor Dennehy’s office, he outlined how the city responded and what is now being done to undo the damage caused by Ophelia.
He told TheJournal.ie: “It’s all about clean up now. We have around 150 trees that have fallen and are blocking roads – that we know of.
Our biggest fear is that some buildings may have sustained structural damage that hasn’t shown yet, and will only become apparent in the next few days. The best thing though is that we didn’t have a casualty or a fatality.
Having faced crises such as flooding in recent years, Sinn Féin’s Ó Laoghaire said the city was well prepared for Ophelia.
“In terms of the damage done to property, it’s not as bad as recent floods,” he said. “We’ve had people out round the clock working on this and credit to them, the council and all the emergency services.”
Dennehy said that the multi-agency crisis management team clicked into gear at the weekend and began monitoring the situation at an early stage.
He said: “Our engineers determined that it was highly likely we wouldn’t flood, so then it was all about following the storm hour by hour.
We now have about a week’s worth of clean up now, and we have 300 staff on that. They started at 5pm yesterday, as soon as the storm had passed. We reacted only to life or death situations yesterday, because we were putting our own staff at risk. On behalf of the Lord Mayor’s office, I want to thank all the council staff and the emergency services for their stellar work.
Dennehy added that the crisis team payed so much attention to the storm’s progress because hadn’t seen the like of Ophelia before. I had a feeling I knew what he was going to say next.
“This was a storm that wasn’t usual,” he said. “It wasn’t following normal path lines. Our biggest fear from the storm was that it was so unprecedented, we didn’t know how it would go.”
The damage caused to the city and county will almost certainly run into the millions of euro. There is a lot of work to be done certainly.
But with Cork City on course to win Irish football’s premier division to a packed crowd this evening, people back to work, back out and about on the streets on a sunny day, a resilient Cork was bouncing back just a day after it got hit with the worst storm in 50 years. Unprecedented.
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One can only hope the banks recent advertising blitz on every single app imaginable is a positive sign. Would be a real shame if it closes and vomit enducing if that shower of S$!tes PTSB got there hands on it.
They are still filling new positions as of now pointing to a desire to remain.
The last thing this country needs is LESS competition in the banking sector!
We should be encouraging every euro-zone bank to set up operations in Ireland.
KBC was also bailed out in Belgium..
hope they f@ck off and bring my mortgage with them.
You want them to go leaving less banks and less competition so the others can increase fees
@the truth:
They had no problems causing anxiety and worry to tracker mortgage holders who they moved off their trackers and took seven years to admit it.
It not nice to see anybody worried, but they showed no empathy for their customers who they were diddling out of their trackers and then refused to engage with.
I’m finishing it hard to have too much sympathy for KBC .
Me too the truth. I’ll say a prayer :-)
I went from a fixed rate to a tracker Joan & KBC never tried to take it off me. They have been very helpful to me. Obviously it helps that i’m not in negative equity.
if they take my mortgage with them I don’t give a bollix what they leave darren
Amen trisha
@Trisha Tully: that’s good for you. I’m glad.
it doesn’t make the case I’m speaking of any less true.
KBC acted appallingly to the clients and caused considerable anxiety and failed time and again to engage with them, despite having been directed to by the central bank.
They eventually were forced to apologise .
Is it possible to bank in Ireland without state subsidies. AIB have been bailed out twice in 30 years how can other banks compete when they now the two big Irish banks will get a bail out when ever they get in trouble.
Not all banks were bailed. KBC wasn’t.
@Joe
Parent company KBC were bailed out twice in last 8 years, €3.5 billion by the Federal government in 2008 and a further €3.5 billion by the Flemish government in 2009.
KBC Ireland in turn have twice being bailed out by their Belgian parent and is due to start paying a dividend back to the parent in 2017.
KBC Ireland have been bailed out twice from KBC in Belgium via some of the funds from the 2 bailouts given to KBC by Belgium and Flemish governments in 2007 and 2009
They were in just a big a mess as Irush banks.
KBC bank Ireland were bailed out Google it.
NOT BY THE IRISH TAX PAYER. It was funded to set up retail by Belgium.
You are presenting Kellyanne Conway ‘alternative facts’ there, KBC Ireland were bailed out due to the accumulation of losses and write offs on its mortgage books
Kbc is a bond holder. We bailed them out
@Rebecca De Stanleigh: KBC Ireland were bailed out they were bailed out by the Belgian Government and that is 100% fact
@Brendan Crowe: I see your point and you are correct but also the belgian government bailed the irish branch of KBC
That’s already been sorted, in future it’ll be a ‘bail-in’ that saves the bank. Deposits will be hit.
Metro bank in the U.K. And Toronto Dominion in the U.S have done well to penetrate the retail banking markets against large legacy banks…
To succeed they need to be faster to respond to market demands, have a plan to profitability, decent leadership, appeal to young professionals, be more service orientated, more innovative, sell more ancillary products and services, take advantage of technology to provide better services at less cost.
Unfortunately the recent entrants into the Irish market seem to believe they can beat the legacies by offering the exact same products and services for less margins and overspending on advertising.
Neither appealing heavily to students with promotions, taking a loss on services sold to them and relying on a legacy of deposits from high wealth baby boomers will yield success for a new market entrant.
Wow Drew.. what bank do you run with such enlightening thiughts?..
Drew.
KBC are in Ireland since 1978, hardly a new entrant
Yet only entered the Irish retail/consumer banking market in 2012…
Cormac. You article is full of rubbish.
Get your facts right Rebecca !!!!
My facts are right. Thanks though
The bubble is about to burst again.
If state/public keep bailing banks out it begs the question of why they are not in public ownership full time and their profits used for the public good.
If a bank has 600 million net profit in Q4, who gets that money?
We should not be bailing out banks, we should be purchasing shares.
While it’s no guarantee, currently analysts (Deutsche Bank) suggest they will be staying. The bank is profitable, the recently expanded credit connections between the parent and subsidiary would make a split difficult, and while they can’t comment on the future of operations here till 9th February, they did say that (group-wide) there were no pending mergers or acquisitions.
Deutsche itself exited 10 countries recently… Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay Denmark, Finland, Norway, Malta and New Zealand. HSBC and Barclays performed similar pull backs.
Profitability is no assurance of a bank remaining in a foreign market, especially in retail banking.
KBC should be nationalised. If you need to ask why, then you obviously do not understand how the economy works. Solidarity with the workers trying to obtain a greater share in the wealth which they create.
@Benjy ..please explain how the Irish government nationalises a Belgium owned bank with a branch’s here ?
Bye bye
I have been warning about the terrible poverty facing Irish neighbors. The figures simply don’t add up. Take subsidies out of farming and the whole thing collapses. We will soon have the highest electricity prices in the world and carbon taxes on burning fuel. Jobs will go , poverty is the result. I makes me cringe
#kbc
I hope my husband isn’t reading this today…who knows what i might say!
#BANKOFME
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