North Atlantic Skyline - - Photographs from the west of Ireland (Galway, Mayo, Clare, Limerick, Roscommon and even Leitrim)

Derrybrien Revisited

Now and then...

Two years ago, the people of an east Galway village woke up to find that they didn't need to come to the hill, because the hill had come to them. Rather, it had come surging down the path of a stream; a huge wall of black sludge flowing relentlessy downhill towards the valley whose streams fill Lough Cutra.

It was a couple of days before I managed to visit the place, and it was a fairly sorry sight. The local rivers suffered fish kills, and there was a danger that the sludge would reach Lough Cutra, spoiling the water supply for Gort. As it was, the smaller streams were unusable for animals. Worst of all, there was the danger that more, and bigger, landslides could yet occur.

There was a smaller slide a couple of weeks later, but, despite heavy rain, there was no further major slides. The construction of the massive windfarm on the hill, widely thought to be connected to the landslide, was halted and the clean-up operation began. Two years on, the giant turbines of the windfarm peer down from the top of the hill and the effects of the landslide are, by and large, wiped away. The pictures of the original damage can be seen here and pictures from an visit three months after the slide can be seen here.

More before and after shots here...

The stream on the upper road today...and what it looked like 2 years ago

galway,ireland, irishblogs,monasette

The original landslide nearly buried this old farmhouse. Two years later, the mud and peat is gone, and the turbines stare down from behind the trees.

Posted by Monasette at October 17, 2005 08:59 PM