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

Landslide

A river runs through it. Landslide at Derrybrien, south Galway.

A couple of months ago, I was driving along the road near Nephin Beg. The sun was setting, so I stopped to take a photograph of a turf stack, nestling in the blooming heather, with the mountain in the background. I strolled about 30 metres off the road across the flat stretch of peat, which was cracked from the dry weather. I could feel the ground tremble as I walked over it, so when I had taken the snap, I stamped on the ground to see how much it would shake. Except the ground didn't shake. It rippled, as if it was as thick as the skin on a bowl of custard. I tiptoed off the bog like Wiley E Coyote (scientifically proven as the only way to walk on a surface that can't support you. FACT).

It was yet another reminder that bogs are essentially very large bodies of water, only just held together either by a mixture of spagnum moss, existing peat, geological characteristics and other vegetion. And because bogs are also rather delicate, the effect of disturbing the equilibrium of plant and mineral life can be rather dramatic. A few weeks ago, there was a landslide in Pollatomish, Co. Mayo, where huge stretches of bog detached itself from the mountain and rolled downhill - it was a miracle that no-one died. Even as the investigation into the cause of that landslide continues when, on Friday, another landslide occurred in south Galway. In the Sliabh Aughty hills, near the village of Derrybrien (about 15 minutes south of Loughrea), a river of peat, mud and not a few trees came crashing down a riverbed, covering fields, partially surrounding an old farmhouse and slowly heading for the nearby road.

There are many parts of Ireland which are both desolate and beautiful. The Sliabh Aughty hills are more desolate than beautiful, forming a barrier between the soggy fields of south Galway, the prosperous plains of Munster to the south and the exposed stone fields of the Burren to the west. To the east, the hills roll down to the banks of Lough Derg and the Shannon. A millenium ago, Brian Boru hid in the oak forests of the area (Derrybrien - Doire - oak), harried the Vikings that had invaded the country and used the area to build up a powerbase that eventually led to his crowning as High King in 1002. Today, the oak forests are but a memory - the hills are covered completely in growing bogs and forestry plantations of conifers, and there are few houses or farms to be seen along the boreens of the mountains. It is rumoured that the IRA had a training camp there (though that rumour seems to exist for every mountain range in Ireland) and one could certainly hide plenty there. It seems an ideal place to build a windfarm, and indeed, a 70 turbine farm is under construction near Derrybrien village. So the question being asked is if the construction work and the landslide are somehow connected.

You can see the cracks in the road, which is used by the heavy vehicles building the windfarm nearby.

I set off early to Derrybrien yesterday to see the landslide for myself. A thick fog covered the hills, reducing visibility to no more than ten metres, and when I reached the "Road blocked" signs, I parked the car and started walking. As the road ascended, a sharp wind whipped the fog across the road.

Entrance to windfarm.

After a mile or so, I passed the entrance to the wind farm. Even on a clear day, it's not visible from any road. I continued along the road, and one could see how the heavy machines had cracked and shattered the road. A while later, a fully-laden truck thundered out of the fog up the entrance, groaning under the strain of a hauling tons of gravel up to the site. Later, another huge earthmover passed by, disappearing behind me into the gloom. After two miles, I had nearly reached the end of the road and reckoned that access to the landslide had to be from another road. I walked back. I drove around to Derrybrien by another boreen, and after asking for directions, discovered that I had been on the right road after all. I must have been only a few yards away from the site earlier. Damn!

The road from Derrybrien to the site of the landslide, blocked off to traffic.

I drove back to the blocked road (from the other, Derrybrien side), parked the car and started walking again. The locals all opened the barrier, and drove up, but at this stage, the fog had burned off, and the sun felt warm. After about a kilometre, I reached the site of the landslide. I had walked right past earlier, but in the fog, I couldn't see it.

The landslide was discovered on Friday, following the path of a river bed and had reached the deserted farmhouse. By yesterday morning, it had advanced (more slowly) towards the road. The workmen were using the two digging machines to dig a dyke which, when filled with boulders, would halt the flow before it reached the road.

The slide on Fridayhad been accompanied with a lot of water (according to the locals) but there was no sign of any flooding yesterday. In the following pic, the workman is trying to ascertain the rate of flow (either that or she was just staring at the ground for an awfully long time).

At the bridge on the road, the workmen had placed large straw bales to protect the bridge if the rubble got that far. So did the work on the windfarm cause the slide ? Well, the source of the slide was a good distance up the hill, quite close to the site. The foundation for each turbine is about the depth of a two-story house, and cuts through the layer of bog to the underlying rock. In addition to the constant shaking of heavy trucks and earthmovers, there has certainly been a lot of disturbance to the bogland in the area. There was a team from the windfarm evaluating the situation and it looks like they will bring more engineers in to help later this week.

Posted by Monasette at October 19, 2003 03:06 PM