Updated 2.46pm
LABOUR TD KEVIN Humphreys came to the rescue of some of his Dublin South East constituents during Monday night’s flooding by gaining access to hundreds of sandbags that were locked away.
The Dáil deputy-turned-hero gave out hundreds of sandbags to locals that were inconveniently under lock-and-key on Strand Road.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie today, Humphreys said he hacksawed the locks off numerous containers to get to the sandbags.
“Gaining access was difficult, he said. “The city council had not opened the boxes so we eventually got the locks off – by using a hacksaw and pickaxe – at about 7.45pm.”
The sandbags were quickly put to work and saved a number of homes on Gordon, Hope and Howard streets from being flooded.
“In some ways, I was disappointed with the response to the floods on Monday evening,” he told TheJournal.ie on Wednesday.
Council workers arrived as the final container was being emptied – about two hours too late.
“They did not deliver any extra sandbags until 12.30am,” added Humphreys.
While there was great work done by council staff that evening, the whole response was a bit slow. There has to be an improvement, especially in the response time between the Met Éireann alert and the council emergency plans being put in place.It was very apparent, very quickly that there was a problem. I began phoning houses in my area at about six o’clock to see if people needed assistance.”
In the process of his heroic actions, Humphreys lost his watch and mobile phone to water damage.
However, it wasn’t all bad news for the Labour TD. One woman was so grateful to Humphreys, she told him that she was going to change her vote in the presidential election and give her first preference to his party’s candidate Michael D Higgins.
In light of today’s revelations, one of our readers has created what he thinks should be Humphreys’ next election poster.
Cheers for that @ColinToner and it should satisfy Graham Harkness’s request in the comments section.
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