Lahinch Clean Up: Blitz spirit and the little things.

Less than one week after the second of two ferocious storms smashed into our lovely hometown, the people of the community displayed a camaraderie and blitz spirit that has transformed the ruined promenade.

The front line: Volunteers face the sea that threatened the town.

The receding sea water has left behind in a silver lining in its wake as the closely knit town is more tightly bonded than ever.

On the Friday morning when I took part the number who volunteered seemed to my untrained eye close to two hundred although foolishly I did not have the presence of mind to do a rough headcount.

This says a lot about the town, the people of Clare and maybe even humanity in general. In times of crisis we can pull together and do what needs to be done.

Up and down the west coast people have done what was needed to help friends’ neighbours and strangers through their time of crisis.

In my 36 years I have never been so directly connected to such a display of unity. I have seen efforts like this in the news alright, read about them in the history books but it has never been so close to my front door.

Maybe I am being overly optimistic but I felt Friday’s operation offered a glimmer of hope for the future.

I think the majority of right thinking people can now subscribe to climate change as a man made phenomenon. I hope I am wrong but I would expect to see more weather events like this in the next few years. It is scientific fact that average global mean temperatures are rising and it seems likely that humankind is to blame. Would it be idealistic to think that we can pull together and do what needs to be done?

Noah enjoying the playground built by the community.

I am nowhere near as conscious of my environmental footprint as I should be. I watch my energy usage and plan my journeys out of financial not environmental consciousness. With two children who, by God’s grace will live long after I have gone, surely my personal environmental legacy should weigh heavily on my mind.

 According to an online carbon  calculator my driving alone, which I guessed at a very conservative 8000 miles per year, produces 2.34 metric tonnes of CO² per year. In spite of my best efforts I manage to do more damage to the atmosphere than probably all the humans in the world put together before 1700.

I have all the excuses. I need a car to fulfill my parental responsibilities and get to college which I tell myself will provide a better future for my kids. I need somewhere safe and warm, fueled by electricity to raise my kids. None of my wants seem extravagant or particularly selfish  but it goes to show how hard it is as a first world inhabitant to lead a life with minimal environmental impact.

During Fridays clean up I saw a way that a difference could be made. All over the car-park and golf course was litter and debris, small papers bits of rope, empty bottles and other odds and sods of man-made flotsam. The little bits that I managed to stuff into a black bag seemed frustratingly inconsequential. It took ages to disentangle the bits of litter from the grass in just one square meter. I did not want to look up at the thousands of square metres affected for fear of becoming disheartened and returning to my four wheeled CO² making machine. I promised myself I would stick at it with everyone else and when I finally dared to look up and take stock of the land around my spirits lifted.

The previously litter, strewn grass looked as it did before the storm. Lots of people tackling lots of little areas had made a huge difference. Maybe that is a lesson? Maybe that lesson is where hope lies?

In times of crisis we have what it takes. Check out the link below to see how lots of little changes can help.

Ten simple ways to reduce your carbon footprint

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The storm hits

Lahinch in calmer times

It is 5:48 am on Monday 6, January, 2014. Coffee is keeping my comrade Ollie Coughlan and myself awake but it is not soothing my temper as I deal with the glitchy computer.

Outside the wind is picking up by the minute. The calm night has now given away to the beginnings of the storm christened the seasonably appropriate Christine. Lahinch people are a obviously hardy bunch. Ollie is very relaxed in his beachfront apartment we have dubbed ground zero. I step outside the balcony to smoke a cigarette and stare at the sea. With over two hours to high tide the and the wind predicted to gather momentum the high speed breakers are already starting to smash over the fences that were so hopeless a few days before.

A video filmed two hours before the start of the film shows the waves already have enough power to floor over anyone foolish enough to point a video camera at them. I m not going to get as close again. This is only the start.

I retreat to the flat for more coffee. As much to warm my hands which are struggling to type due to numbness. I probably should not be feeling this way but i am relieved that there is going to be something to write about. 

Only two hours ago the night was eerily still. The youngest of our trio, the now retired to bed Evan, joked it would be nice to go for a surf. Looking at the sea back then it would have been very possible. Not anymore.

 6:46 am.. A full ninety minutes from high tide and the waves are hitting harder. We can hear them thudding against the sides of the building in an ominous rhythm. 

6:52 am. The loudest crash yet. The force could be felt through the couch we are sat on. And another one

7.12 am. “Wooh that shock like a mo fo”


Ollie barely disguises his expletives as the apartment shudders. Still one hour till high tide and the wind is gaining in force. Another one hits with equal force.

“It didn’t shake that bad the other night”

says Ollie calmly. I am not so calm as adrenaline rises in my stomach.

7:21 constant thumping now as the apartment feels like its foundations are being hammered.

7.55 not quite high tides and the wind has dropped for now. They eye of the storm? 

8.20 Daylight has revealed the full glory of the spectacle. A public servant who got a bit close nearly loses a government vehicle.

8.31 I got a bit close there! At least my phone is waterproof. I wonder will Sony sponser me?

Awaiting Christine...

Lahinch Prom: January, 3, 2014.

The storms that slammed into the North Clare Village of Lahinch on Friday the third of January caused the worse damage in forty years, according to residents who remembered the 1974 wreckage. The road from Lahinch to the neighbouring fishing village of Liscannor was impassable for a time. On reopening the landscape around it was almost unrecognisable. The debris strewn fields brought to mind the catastrophic typhoon in the Philippines only months before. Preliminary clean-up operations have barely made a scratch in the damage but already another mighty storm is about to batter the punch drunk west coast.

This is ground zero; literally. The surreal +George Karbus photo captures the row of flats were we wait for the promised storm with stoic anticipation. 

The seasonal decorations are not even down as the aptly named Christine makes landfall. I sit in my friends flat in beautiful North Clare and dwell on what an appropriate place nature has chosen to make her power known.

Hurricane Christine threatens Ireland

The nearby Burren is a unique landscape. Here man has a direct connection to his primitive past. When the first Neolithic builder stacked one of the rocks left behind after the last Ice age, upon another one, the point where geography turned into history seemed to be marked. Now geography seems set on taking man’s creations back.

 For millennia man has spread out of his ancient ancestral African homeland and covered the globe. Forests, fossil fuels, precious minerals and animals have all been plundered in the quest for global dominance but now for the first time on humans are faced with retreat on a global scale.

There will be no retreat today. I love this town that for two years was my home. These are my friends and they are staying right here. Ollie Coughlan whose flat we are hunkered down in, is a true friend; the best. If ever there was a man I would want to share a foxhole with it would be this man. He is not leaving so neither am I. Not until the storm is over.

Die-Hard locals Evan Phillips and Ollie Coughlan

Two days ago I interviewed local evacuee Ollie Oeter for the local paper, he said:

  "we got up and tried to stop the leaks; thats when the front window exploded" 

"I could throw a stone through their second floor window from where I am sat, so close are the two apartments."

We are joking that nothing will happen, after all the hype it will all be a washout, pardon the pun. Tonight something is different though. On the forty five minute drive up from Shannon between 12.30 and 1.15 am I counted a dozen lightning flashes of lightening yet my windscreen wipers were not turned on once. I never remember that before, the anticipation in the air is electric, literally.

Six years after the collapse of Fanny Mae pushed the inconvenient truth to the inside of the newspapers nature has decided she deserves the headlines as the world’s true reality star.While we were complaining about sovereignty and negative equity the average sea levels rose by an inch. The rate of growth continues to accelerate. There are many unknowns’, variables that could increase this rate of acceleration massively. This includes the massive Thawites glacier in Antarctica breaking free from its berth, instantly adding three feet to sea levels (National Geographic Vol 224 issue 3 page 41). Whilst no one can truly predict the whats, whens and ifs of these variables, the one thing that is guaranteed is that the rate of increase will continue to accelerate. It is a very inconvenient fact that storms like this and damage like this will become more common and more destructive.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that by 2070 150 million people will be at risk from coastal flooding. The OECD admits this is a conservative estimate. Within the life times of most people reading this piece the global retreat will be underway.