Fire and rain

Every day and every year, we start with the hope that this time will be different. But we’re not optimistic. It’s the way we are. This year we had even more opportunities to practise.

As did others. In America, Australia and Indonesia, the big story was drought and fire. There were bush fires around Sydney early in the year, and in July forest fires devastated seven American states. Near the town of Show Low, the blaze was 35 metres high and two to three miles wide and it burned 700 square miles of forest. That’s 2% of Ireland.

The fires were so vast that the smoke merged from state to state into a pall big enough to lower temperatures across three time zones. Same in South East Asia, darkened by a smoke and dust cloud three kilometres high, much of it caused by smouldering peat bogs in Indonesia.

Not so for us. Instead, we got all washed up.

Once it was Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Venezuela, China, Vietnam and Bangla Desh. This year it was Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and Russia, all submerged during the late summer. Early in the year and again in October and November, the Irish also went under, as did our nearest neighbours.

It was incredible. Hundreds died in Central Europe. Vast swathes of land were submerged. Bridges and dams were tossed aside like matchsticks in Germany and the Czech Republic. Prague and Dresden were swamped. There were landslides in Switzerland. The Germans estimate the damage in that country alone will cost E25 billion to put right.

Closer to home, 20 days’ worth of rain fell on London in 30 minutes on August 7, 2002. Here, October was the wettest on record. Eastern, midlands and southern counties were swamped in November. Drainage systems failed and flash floods swept through the streets. Rivers burst their banks, roads closed, were washed away. Fields, their water tables already saturated, just gave up.

It was wanly summarised by the picture of a forlorn Bertie Ahern, up to his oxters in the River Tolka as it inundated Drumcondra. Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.

But why is this happening?

There are local reasons, like housing estates built over natural flood plains. This forces the rainwater downstream, where the river course is unable to accommodate it. There’s also the blocked drains and fussy traffic controls that seem to attract floods.

There’s also global reasons. Some blame El Niño, the celebrated warming of the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean. This pumps a lot of extra energy, and water, into the atmosphere and upsets the usual climatic patterns. Others point to the greenhouse effect, saying that polar icecaps and high mountain glaciers are melting at an incredible rate. For example, the Larsson shelf ice field melted in Antarctica this year. It was a sheet bigger than counties Dublin and Meath combined and it broke up into icebergs in less than six weeks.

It is also said that a huge river of icy freshwater is flowing into the North Atlantic from these melting ice fields and glaciers. This lowers the salinity of the sea and pushes the Gulf Stream to the south. Indeed, some say we only have another decade of living as we know it now.

In which case, it isn’t just Bertie who’ll need the fishing boots...