Athlone It Stands

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This afternoon.

Athlone town, Co Westmeath

Sasko writes:

An aeriel view of the River Shannon flowing into Athlone Town. The National Emergency Coordination Centre has said there is a high risk of flooding from Limerick City to Athlone tonight…

Met Eireann issues two weather warnings as Ireland set to be hit by worst floods in 20 years (David Maher, Irish Mirror)

(Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews)

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36 thoughts on “Athlone It Stands

  1. Lorcan Nagle

    My Brother in law used to live in the townhouses in the second and third photos. Lucky he moved now.

  2. CousinJack

    Predictable

    If you live on bogland next to a river, you should guess that flooding is something that is going to happen eventually.

    Zero planning, and kowtowing to the agricultural/ruralist lobby = bad outcomes/poor services, stopping voting FF/FG/other corrupt gombeen politician

    How often do the farmers in the Shannon basin say that the Shannon should be drained, which equals more water in the river faster and more flooding downstream in urban areas.

    If OPW/ESB are forced to hold excessive amounts of water back, on one of those dams or weirs fails, catastorphe and death wil result.

      1. CousinJack

        bogland forms where soil is waterlogged, generally in the midlands because the marl underneath prevents water perculating into the ground. So u is wrong

        1. eoin hurley

          in Britain they are restoring many of their bogs because they prevent flooding. Bogs hold approx 20 times more water than soil ie earth. it’s one of the reasons you get the bog bodies.

    1. CousinJack

      Whilst accepting that climate change is a real and demonstrable, and due to human actions. Individual and cluster of flood events are not climate change nor evidence of it, and such statements play directly into the hands of the climate change deniers. There have always been floods and clusters of flood events, which is why hdrologist talk about statistical event frequency (and thus hundred year events can occur every other year ind ifferent parts of ireland or repeat in the same area, as its meets statistical probability).

        1. CousinJack

          There is insufficient data period to tell, given that the current records are only based on about 150years of reasonably accurate records (and much less in most parts of the world)

          1. eoin hurley

            well you can put together a reasonable idea of rainfall from different sources. whether that’s dendrochronology, soil samples and connect that up with literature.

    2. David

      “Perhaps now would be a good time to reconsider our non-response to climate change.”

      Twenty years ago would have been a better time, but yes. Weather and climate are different, I accept that. That does not give humans an excuse to add 30+billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year.

    1. scottser

      You’re from limerick, arent you anne? Dont forget to wave at your fellow natives as they wash down o’connell st later on.

      1. Nigel

        A series of undrained, marshy, boggy areas to soak up thousands of gallons of water, slowly releasing them as the water level drops, would be handier.

  3. Peter Dempsey

    Great post on Athlone

    “I lived in Athlone for four years, worst four years in my life

    The places is full of settled travellers and small farmers who lost their farms and a new cross breed of travellers and farmers, the perfect mix of scum and redneck, that commonly have addictions to the heroin the army brings through the barracks from the Lebanon on the sly. Athlone has a raging smack problem, but is a totally landlocked town, so nobody could understand how such huge amounts of smack was getting into this small provincial town… why go to the trouble of bringing it from Dublin, Cork or Galway to some midlands dive when you could sell it in these big coastal city, this was along the lines of the general thinking on the matter.

    Turns out some soldiers coming back from the Lebanon were loading the tanks full of Heroin, at this time Athlone was where everything coming and going from the Leb was cleared. Rise in smack problem Q.E.D.

    The culture shock, especially from somewhere civil like Dublin, is intense. The place was bloody feral back in the 90s.

    One year Scheer and Watercress came to Athlone RTC… it was poorly attended so for the next three years of my time there they had Abbaesque on instead…

    *mimes slashing wrists*

    And you have that lovely country thing of the locals hating students EVEN THOUGH the students are one of the few things bringing money into the town.

    Of a friday, in Athlone, around 9pm you would hear for miles around the trundle of taxis coming from every farm house and tin roofed shack in the surrounding counties… all heading for “BOZO’S” night club in Athlone.

    Where once in side all the men, identically dressed in blue jeans and white blue check shirts with the back of the collar flicked up (why?!?), they would savage an unholy feed of booze, molest women in the most base manners, savage more booze, puke on each other, puke on everyone else (it’s amazing how socially accepted vomit is in Athlone), then all the ones who weren’t off to sexually assault some poor lass down a side street, would head up to Supermacs to beat several shades of sh*t out of anyone who looked liked they deserved it.

    I assure everyone these boys were all country stock true and true. Best friends would paste each other into the pavement using their fists. But by the next week it’d all be forgotten.

    Granted most of these sorts generally move to Dublin for college, go to DCU, TCD or UCD or somewhere sh*te like that, doss around on the grant, and generally become the sort of assholes who ring up looking for last months invoice, or the sort of schmucks the bank sends you too when you havn’t paid you student loan in a year or two. This would point to while older pubs in the country are superior, supposidly cause all the ass holes have moved to Lucan and are trying to outdo each other with gimicky kitchens and spoiled children.

    I lived with a country fella down in Athlone who used to cook two dinners when he was cooking, he’d lay both dinners out on two plates, just as if he was serving to people… then he would eat one and put the other one in his press (not the fridge.. the press) where it remain till dinner time the next day when he’d pull it out bing it in the microwave and tuck in.

    I liked living in the country…. however Athlone was the most depressing place on earth, constantly grey of sky and suspicous of odour. But no matter how mental you thought you were going or how drunkly stoned and depraved your life was becoming you only had to have a quick look aorund you and realise that most folk there were a BILLION times worse off then you!

    I firmly believe Athlone was built on some bad energy line or something, or a Indian burial ground, or the very gateway to the pit of hell itself.

    The whole town needs to be nuked from orbit.”

    1. scottser

      it was explained to me once, how the athlone accent is replicated:
      ‘it’s a generic country accent, except you don’t move the bottom of your jaw’.

  4. Quint

    Gross exaggeration, obviously, but to be fair to Athlone it’s just like every other town in the country – they’re all the same. The same average restaurants and crappy nightclubs and local head bangers/characters. Killarney, Limerick, Carrick On Shannon, Letterkenny…they’re all the same. Nowhere is perfect and Dublin is just a bigger version of the average Irish provincial town. In fact, it’s probably worse.

  5. Truth in the News

    There are several sluices and a major dam on this river system that now
    obstruct the flow of water and impede drainage and has done so since 1927
    its called the Ard na Crusha Hydro Electric Station with an installed generation
    capacity of 85 Mw, its contribution to present Power Demand of over 5000Mw is miniscule, its current application is to provide a spinning reserve and for filling
    peak time load levelling and Wind Turbine power generation drop out, water is being held back to meet this requirment right down to the last Cubic Meter.
    The time has come for those affected by the damage to sue the ESB, OPW and the Government, the door has been kicked open in Cork, the running of the ESB
    is a closed shop just like IFA and a lot more of them, its time they were made
    accountable…..who represents the Public Interest on the Board of the ESB.

  6. Truth in the News

    Ever looked up the name of the place and had a saunter around Ringsend
    at next high tide, will you damage Government Property with impunity…who
    is the dope……:?.

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