Galway City Council dealt with 686 incidents in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn — with over half of the callouts from tenants in local authority housing.

It was ‘all hands on deck’ to deal with the unprecedented carnage. The Council set up a Crisis Management Team, Local Emergency Coordination Group and Onsite Coordinator to manage their response.

Director of Services for Operational Development, Patrick Greene, revealed that 70 operational and technical staff were deployed on the ground from roads, parks, housing and environment departments with 12 contractors brought in from a tree specialist.

While the toll is still being assessed, they were faced with serious damage to local authority-managed woodlands and parks, pitches and sporting facilities, public toilets, signage and poles, traffic lights and pedestrian lights, street lighting and buildings.

Three weeks on from the hurricane-force winds, they were still flat out working, said Mr Greene told this week’s meeting.

“The remaining issues include traffic light outages, mainly pedestrian crossings, including VMS (Variable Message Signs), clearing of debris and some dangerous structures; a significant number of street lights are still out.

“There is still significant tree removal operation required, including interaction with ESB in some cases — these trees will take some time to clear over the coming weeks. Council-owned infrastructure and properties and buildings damaged, significant damage to all woodlands and our two MUGAs (Multi-Use Games Areas) which remain closed.”

So far 387 calls had been logged in relation to Council houses – over one third involved roof repairs. Most of those had been completed.

There had been a great uptake in the three community centres opened for showers and charging facilities over the bank holiday weekend.

“Our response was really brilliant,” declared Mr Greene.

“It was a real spectacle of public service the way they delivered. We won’t be sorted for weeks, in some cases months.”

Councillor Frank Fahy (FG) asked about giving financial or logistical aid to landowners whose trees had been flattened. While some were a danger to the public, they were finding it difficult to locate “insured, competent” workers for the job.

“Multiple cowboys are offering to do the work,” he believed.

Mr Greene said it was up to each private landowner to deal with their own trees. While there was an enforcement process to force them to comply with their obligations, it was not something the local authority would pursue for now after a historic storm.

“We can take the trees down if we see them as dangerous and we have done that in certain cases. We have also cordoned off areas where trees are an issue because we have so much to deal with ourselves.”

Pictured: A tree blown down, close to the Pearse Stadium, during storm Éowyn. Photo: Joe O’Shaughnessy.