WATER SHORTAGES:IT'S BEEN three days since many of the residents of Cabra in north Dublin had mains water in their homes. Some seem angry but more than anything, locals seem confused as to how it happened.
“We’re in 2010 and in this day and age having no water is a joke,” Eric O’Brien from Broombridge Avenue in Cabra west said last night.
“You’d understand it in Africa. They have droughts and sunshine all year round, but I’m living in this area 49 years and I’ve never experienced anything like it and my parents before me never experienced anything like it either. It’s an absolute joke.”
But who’s to blame? “You’d have to be thick with the Government,” he said. “They went on holidays when we had the snow there and now people are telling me I should hang a bucket into the canal and get my water from there. Not a chance.”
Around the corner from Mr O’Brien’s home, on Carndonagh Road, Dublin City Council staff were busily filling buckets, bottles and bags from tankers in an attempt to provide locals with enough water to make it through until morning. “This thing holds 200 gallons and this is the third time it’s been emptied today,” said Alan, a member of the council’s water services department. “There’s another one up the road and there are three more around the corner at Ventry Park.”
Alan said the flow of residents to and from tankers hadn’t stopped since they arrived some eight hours earlier and there had been lengthy queues at various points in the day. “They’re all very sound about it and realise we are doing our best. Some people are getting panicked though. Whoever rang Joe Duffy and said people should leave the taps running so they don’t freeze should be shot.
“If it’s going to freeze it’ll freeze, but if you heat the pipes with a hairdryer it’ll work. Really. It will.”
