FINAL POSTING

FINAL POSTING
To wrap up this semester let’s discuss Ireland’s varying natural hazards, and natural disasters. Ireland doesn’t have a lot of weather issues in general. It’s a pretty mellow country, boring one might say.

Ireland doesn’t really have any earthquakes. They’re pretty much non existent, and for the ones that do exist, they’re obsolete. Ireland hasn’t had a major earthquake since the 1980’s. There was a 5.4 quake, but it only caused minor structural damage along the east coast of the country. A geologist has previously said that an earthquake of this stature would be highly unlikely. It has been shown that Ireland has many tiny quakes (<1.5).  Due to the fact that Ireland has little to no earthquakes at all, they really do not do anything to protect themselves.

Next we have Ireland’s lack of tsunamis. By that, I mean the fact that there hasn’t been a tsunami in Ireland since the 1700’s. The only reason there was a tsunami was because there was a huge earthquake that ripped through the UK, this caused massive waves to hit Ireland and the UK. Suddenly now some researchers think Ireland is overdue for a huge tsunami, that could cause extensive damage. However, I don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future.

Throughout Ireland’s history, there have been many volcanic eruptions. However, at the moment volcanoes pose no immediate threat to the country at all. Shocking, I know. The country is surrounded by a bunch of extinct volcanoes, meaning they pretty much do nothing. There’s a place called Croghan Hill and The Hill of Allen, that were formed from the remains of extinct volcanoes. The last volcano that erupted in Ireland was 200 million years ago… Something tells me volcanic eruptions are the least of Ireland’s problems.

Finally something of slight interest happened in Ireland around 1986. There was a huge hurricane that swept through the country. They named this hurricane Hurricane Charley. But eventually this “hurricane” got downgraded to an extratropical cyclone. Sadly, eleven people died between Ireland and the UK, in this disaster. In a span of just 24 hours there was over half a foot of rainfall. The 7.8 inch rainfall total holds the record for the greatest rainfall total in the history of Ireland. Obviously when there’s half a foot of rain, there’s huge flooding issues. Two rivers collapsed, breaking the banks between them. Being as how Ireland clearly didn’t have any warning signs that a hurricane was coming, they had no precautionary measures to battle a storm such as Hurricane Charley.

Let’s talk about the many landslides Ireland has suffered over the last hundred years. These are triggered when the ground soaks up water after a heavy rainfall. One County in particular, Country Fermanagh experiences many landslides at the base of its mountain ranges.
In 2003, Ireland had a major disaster. They had a landslide that happened in a town located in County Galway. Dirt and rock came rushing down, which resulted in several heavily polluted rivers. However, there were no injuries from this event because the landslide hit mostly forest areas.

For those of you who are actually still reading this, Ireland in fact has a lot of sinkholes!! They have so many that they even call this their “sinkhole phenomenon”, which apparently is becoming quite a danger. In Ireland alone, there are over 6,000 sinkholes, this doesn’t even include the holes that haven’t been mapped out yet. Again, thankfully, none of these sinkholes really pose a threat. They don’t really appear in populated areas.

Now let’s talk about Ireland’s weird “drought” situations. Something that I find interesting is that Ireland’s version of a drought is when it doesn’t rain for 15 days. This information comes from a 2013 article I found. Ireland issued a yellow alert, which notifies people who are at risk from where they live, or their activities. During this “heat wave’ the elderly and children were expected to stay inside due to scorching temperatures. This went on for a few days, as the days grew hotter in 2013, Ireland slowly began raising their yellow alert, to an orange alert. As a result of this weather a shocking 760 people actually died during this record heat wave. Which is odd to me, considering the highest heat was only around 90 degrees fahrenheit.

The most recent major weather event that happened in Ireland, was in 2014. It was a storm named Storm Darwin, and it crashed through parts of Ireland in February of 2014. This storm consisted of high wind speeds, that got up to 120-160 kilometers per hour. With such high wind speeds, there was a lot of damage, but thankfully there were no casualties involved in this storm. There was mainly damage to buildings and homes.


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