The aftermath of Storm Éowyn has divided Ireland in two. Along the eastern seaboard, the effects of the storm blew over as soon as the winds departed and normal life continued.
In parts of rural Ireland the storm has caused an ongoing nightmare of power cuts and uncertainty as to the future. The problem is particularly acute in parts of rural Leitrim which have been planted for commercial forestry, mostly Sitka spruce.
The county is now the most afforested in the country with 20 per cent woodland cover. Banks, investment funds, pension schemes, large multinationals seeking carbon credits and local farmers have piled into the county in the past 30 years.
Locals, who live near large plantations, say outages are becoming more frequent and longer in length due to storms; they blame trees falling on power lines.
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Two days after Storm Éowyn, IT consultant Lisa McCrann flew her drone to assess the true extent of the damage.
She lives in Drumdarken outside Cloone with her husband and their six-year-old daughter. They are surrounded by forest.
Only from the air can the true extent of the damage be seen. There are thousands of trees down in Leitrim.
“I wasn’t expecting what I could see,” she says. “I never thought for a second it would be that bad.
“I could see from the drone footage that the problem was trees. After Storm Darragh [in December] there was some of the lines down. If the trees had been cut down then, they wouldn’t need to be cut down now. Trees are the main reason why we are without power for two weeks.”
The McCranns have been without electricity for two weeks. It’s the third time they have been out in just over a year.
“Does the Government even want people living in rural Ireland?” she asks.
She and her daughter would often go rambling in the forest owned by her neighbour Frank McHugh and his father, Frank snr. They planted 15 hectares (37 acres) locally in the 2000s. The interior of the wood has been reduced to a tangle of uprooted trees blocking access in all directions. Father and son were supposed to clear the wood in the coming years. That process will have to be accelerated.
“It’s a lot of heartache. A lot of years of work and a lot of uncertainty. It really makes you think – do I want to replant?” said Frank jnr.
After Storm Darragh the McHughs contacted the ESB to inform them some trees had been damaged and could fall down in a future storm. Nobody from the ESB turned up.
Since Storm Éowyn, ESB crews, along with French crews, spent two days in Erdogale wood felling dozens of trees just to free the power lines.
The problem exists across the county.
Michael and Catherine Clerkin and their severely disabled son, 33-year-old David Lynch, have been without power four times this winter.
They are one of 40 households on the Drumshanbo to Ballinamore road at Creenagh townland still out two weeks after Storm Éowyn.
They have been given a date of February 9th for power to return.
Catherine says her carer’s allowance is paying for a petrol generator to operate David’s hoist, chair and bed, but they can’t use the washing machine, shower, oven or microwave. Despite being previously identified as a priority case, they have not heard from anybody in the ESB.
She and her neighbours are surrounded by forest. “We are living here since 1987 and the outages have got a lot worse. When I first came here there were no outages at all.”
Farther south, near the village of Drumsna, Edwina Guckian and her husband, Michael, have borrowed a generator to supply electricity for local people after fallen trees surrounding them left them without power for almost two weeks.
Guckian is a member of the Save Leitrim group, which was set up eight years ago to campaign against the proliferation of commercial plantations in the county and to replace Sitka spruce with native species of trees. They have had little traction.
“We have been asking a forestry minister to meet with us for years,” she said.
“It’s not that we are this group of serial objectors, we are genuinely just community people who want to be listened to. There are people who are surrounded by forestry. It’s so disheartening.”
The State has set ambitious targets for forestry to be increased to 18 per cent by 2050 from just 11.6 per cent at present, the lowest in the EU.
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