Update from the National Emergency Coordination Group (NECG) at 12.30hrs on 2 March 2018
From Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Published on
Last updated on
From Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Published on
Last updated on
The NECG met this morning to review the severe weather situation and was joined by An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Minister Eoghan Murphy and Ministers Simon Harris and Damien English by conference call and the Tánaiste, Simon Coveney was in touch directly on a number of issues.
The anticipated snow and wind associated with Storm Emma arrived last night and continues to impact on southern and eastern parts of the country today.
As well as the lying snow and severe cold, which are creating treacherous conditions many areas are severely impacted by drifting snow.
The current weather situation is that:
*an ORANGE Level warning is in place in the rest of the country. Snow-ice Warning for Cavan, Monaghan, Donegal, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo
The NECG wishes to express its gratitude to the public for taking its advice and staying indoors yesterday evening and last night. The commitment of staff who worked across a variety of sectors to keep essential services operational is to be commended. Through their efforts, in very difficult conditions, essential services like hospitals, nursing homes and care facilities maintained their operations. Other staff have been working to keep the country’s roads open and to restore public transport.
The emergency services responded to a number of 999 calls last night:
There were emergency calls from a number of stranded motorists in several areas, highlighting that roads are extremely treacherous and many roads throughout the country are impassable or near impassable.
All public transport services are closed and will remain so for the remainder of the day. Public transport operators are assessing the situation with the intention of restoring services tomorrow, however it may be later in the day when full service is restored subject to conditions locally.
Although it is still snowing in many areas, the task of clearing national roads is already well underway. Yesterday, local authorities and TII worked at full capacity and gritted 24,000 km of roads and spread 6,000 tonnes of salt on the priority roads and will be repeating these efforts today.
Airlines have suspended operations until Saturday morning (3rd March). All ferry sailings are cancelled today.
The snow drifting which has occurred is going to pose particular problems. Local roads will take a considerable period of time and will be very difficult. Individual houses may be inaccessible.
ESB are working to restoring power after some significant outages last night. Like Irish Water and communications infrastructure providers, the main issue is getting access to problem areas.
There are isolated reports of incidents affecting water and wastewater treatment plants and precautionary boil water notices are in place in some areas.
Irish Water is continuing to monitor the situation and information updates on supplies are available from www.water.ie
There are also some issues relating to power outages affecting plant operations and Irish Water is working closely with ESB to rectify the issues.
The work of volunteers and organisations who worked tirelessly to bring as many rough sleepers as possible indoors to shelter and safety during the severe weather is to be commended.
It is understood from the Peter McVerry Trust that there were less than 15 individuals in Dublin city who refused shelter. These people were provided with thermal blankets and were monitored on an hourly basis through the night.
Yesterday teams worked with the HSE on the streets to ensure the medical needs of individuals were met.
The country is still in the middle of a very severe weather emergency with Red and Orange warnings in place. All services will be working at peak capacity and the public are asked for patience while works to restore services and clear transport routes are completed.
The priority is to restore the motorway and primary road network and to get public transport moving again.
The public can assist this work by not attempting any journeys.
The key public safety messages are:
We are continuing our work and will meet again at 4.00 pm to review and further co-ordinate our efforts.
Ends