Update to Flooding Incidents in Drogheda Town on 4th July 2023

Update to Flooding Incidents in Drogheda Town on 4th July 2023

A thundery cloud burst lasting only a few minutes inundated storm water drainage infrastructure causing instant flooding of roads and pavements at various locations in the  Drogheda Town area.

The road gullies are only designed to cater for 2 inches of rain per hours and this intense downpour exceeded design of pipes and sewers.  90% of the water collection network are combined sewers (foul and storm) shared with Uisce Éireann and are of limited capacity. Manholes lids were blown off by the pressure of high flows in Trinity Street and had to be quickly replaced as the flood waters eased by Louth County Council crews.

There were several areas instantly flooded yesterday afternoon in the downpour - Hardman gardens, Trinity St., Cement Road and Bridge of Peace as the cloud burst moved south to north across town.

Louth County Council Fire crews were immediately on hand with high volume pumping equipment at Hardman gardens to quickly drain the flooded areas before it flooded even more property. Louth County Council also have hundreds of sandbags pre-filled for these kinds of scenarios and we freely give these to properties which were susceptible to flooding in past e.g. at Ship St.

Separately we understand the flooding in shopping centre was a roofing issue which is being rectified by the centre themselves and not related to road flooding per se.

It is believed that the intensity of the downpour was the cause of flash flood yesterday. Louth County Council have a rigorous gully cleaning regime and all gullies are kept clean and free flowing by our crews proactively cleaning all 3000 gullies in the town.