A Galway shop was “absolutely destroyed” as a worker got trapped inside after a surge.
Storm Debi caused major destruction in parts of the country, with Galway being hit particularly hard.
Ronan Hennigan, an owner of a Londis supermarket in Clarinbridge, shared that seawater flooded his store causing terrible damage.
He explained that he got a call from his deli manager at 4.35AM when water began coming in through the shop’s front door. The employee became stuck inside because of this.
“We rang the emergency services, they sent out a fire brigade, an ambulance and eventually the tide subsided about half an hour later and they were able to get in, get him out and take him to hospital and get him checked out. Fortunately, he’s fine, he’s okay,” he told RTÉ's News At One.
"He was trapped in the shop. He spoke to me at 4.35am and by 4.45am the water had risen ten, 12 feet.
“It was seawater, so it was a storm surge. At that stage the wind was hurricane level, it was that bad.”
He described the supermarket’s damage as “unthinkable” as he called on the Government for help.
Mr Hennigan continued: “We’ve no insurance now. We need the Government’s help on this because otherwise my 20 staff will be out of a job and we won’t be able to open again.
“I would estimate the cost of the damage, I couldn’t put a figure on it but minimum half a million, €700,000, that’s how bad, it’s devastation.
“It just cleaned everything out, it moved coolers around the shop, contaminated all the food so that all has to be dumped. It’s horrendous, horrendous.
“It’s an absolute nightmare, a nightmare, the worst way you could have woken up.”
His shop had previously flooded in 2018, and he pointed out no flood defence system has been established since them.
“There’s six other businesses in the complex so I’m not the only one affected by this,” he added.
“They’re devastated, the people are devastated, there’s no flood defence so this could happen again in two weeks’ time if we get another bad storm, you can’t say that it won’t until something is done about it.”
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