Rundale

By Laure Detymowski

Killed by “heavy rain”?

Returning to a past event that involved a loss of life as did the Dublin 2011 flood event cannot be anything but incredibly painful, especially for those closest to the victim. However, assessing the event is also crucial to locate any potential failures that may have caused it and should be avoided at all costs in the future, which is what this short article focuses on.

On the night of 24th October 2011, during the worst Dublin flood event of the last decade, Celia de Jesus was trapped in the Harold’s Cross basement flat she was renting at the time and died as a result. The dominant narrative surrounding her death has been that she was killed by the flood after the river Poddle burst its banks. The Dublin District Coroner verdict “Drowning as a result of a surge of water and flooding over a short period of time following two days of heavy rain” (Coroner report, 2012) and Office of Public Works (OPW) appointed consulting firm statement that she was “trapped by flood waters” confirm such a reading of the tragic event.

In response to the 2011 flood event and tragic death, a flood alleviation scheme (FAS) was designed for the river Poddle, and works are now underway after the FAS was approved by An Bord Pleanála in 2023. The €10m FAS (originally €7m) is managed by the OPW in conjunction with Dublin City Council (DCC), South Dublin County Council (SDCC) and consulting firm Nicholas O’Dwyer. It consists of a mix of hard and soft defences to be implemented at catchment level.

Based on a four-year PhD research project, this article presents data that challenge the river Poddle FAS as the most appropriate response to the tragic event. Instead, data expose the tragic death as the prime result of ongoing flood maladaptation in the catchment. Drawing from research organized around 2 periods of time that extend before and after the 2011 flood event, I outline how flood adaptation governance in Dublin is largely driven by the imperatives of the real estate, rental and insurance markets. In the process, the ‘unpropertied’ are further marginalized. From this perspective, Celia de Jesus’s death cannot be attributed to “heavy rain” but must be seen as the result of uneven systemic/structural forms of (flood) endangerment, what Engels famously coined social murder.

1985 to 2011: Relentless engineering and development

Flood governance in the Poddle catchment has long been driven by the assumption that engineering could address ongoing flood-prone development, with hard infrastructures and other heavily engineered interventions being seen as the solution. If hard infrastructural failures appear in flood reports, they rarely seem to be acted upon. In 1985, for instance, a large section of the river Poddle culvert located on Lower Kimmage Road collapsed. One year later, Hurricane Charley hit the country and caused one of the worst flood events ever experienced in Dublin. During the flood event, the culverts of the river acted as major aggravating causes due to blockage and low capacity. Despite such failures, the main response to Hurricane Charley by DCC was to build more culverts.

The year of 1997 illustrates how flood engineering in the catchment was heavily driven by developers’ agenda. To address flood risk posed by a large development project in Kimmage Manor, SDCC created a set of flood alleviation ponds in Tymon Park South (SDCC, 2001). “Over 100K cubic metres of earth were excavated” (SDCC, 2001) to build the ponds. Led by Flynn & O’Flaherty Properties Ltd, the development comprised 336 houses and 24 apartments at a price of up to £290K for the houses.

Parallel to the ongoing engineering and lucrative development of the catchment, many signs pointed to the flood vulnerability of tenants living in and around what would become Celia de Jesus’s home in 2011, but these were ignored. In 1986 for instance, several Harold’s Cross houses and their basement were flooded during the event, including the property where Celia de Jesus would live in 2011. The basement resident of 1 Parnell Road, only two doors away, reported a 73cm water level. Furthermore, in 2009, the property which half-basement would be rented by Celia de Jesus was also described as follows in a planning application submitted to DCC: “The said property, which is in multiple occupancy, is not of a habitable standard” (Don Harrold MRIAI Architect, Conservation methodology statement). At the time of the 2011 flood event, the property was found to be divided into five rental units, including two at basement level.

The 2011 flood event: A tenant’s flood trap

A few days prior to the 24th of October 2011, unusually heavy rainfall affected the Dublin region and initiated a flood event that unfolded in many parts of the city on the evening of the 24th. In the river Poddle catchment, as in 1986, the flood event developed in ways that clearly challenged our overreliance on engineering as a main way to alleviate flood impact. Only a decade after their completion, the Tymon Park South flood ponds proved insufficient in containing excessive water flow and, as in 1986, culvert failure acted as a major aggravating factor in the way the flood event unfolded.

When the flood water finally reached Celia de Jesus’s basement flat, she was unable to open her entrance door, which was the only means of escape at her disposal as the only window of the flat was blocked with metal bars (Tenant deposition in Coroner report, 2012). In addition to the lack of alternative means of escape, the inspection conducted in the property after the flood event revealed many breaches of fire safety guidelines affecting all five rental units (Senior Executive Fire Prevention Officer deposition in Coroner report, 2012). However, despite all evidence to the contrary, the death of Celia de Jesus was attributed to heavy rain and relayed as such in the medias.

2011 to 2014: Back to business-as-usual

In December 2011, only two months after the death of his tenant, Celia de Jesus’ landlord submitted a new planning application to DCC to reunite the 5 rental units of his property into 1, which was approved. In 2015, the property in which Celia de Jesus died was sold at a price of €535K and it is now registered on the RTB’s register as a 6 bedroom rental property (August 2024).

Concerning developers, as soon as 2014 they received confirmation from DCC that the proposed river Poddle FAS was to be implemented shortly, giving them the license to continue developing flood-prone areas. Since then, riverbank and river culvert developments have intensified in the form of infillings and larger redevelopment projects both upstream and downstream of the catchment. In line with state policy encouraging financial actors to enter the housing market, these developments are more and more in the form of large build-to-rent infrastructures. Examples include Mount Argus high-end apartment residence owned by global real estate fund Patrizia who manages €57 billion of real assets. To facilitate these redevelopments, the upstream culverted section of the river is mapped as a “surface water drain” by public authorities, which results in its disappearance from flood risk assessments.

Also in 2014, to further safeguard the real estate market in the face of increased flood risk, the OPW signed a memorandum of understanding with Insurance Ireland. As summarized by a local councillor, problems getting flood insurance keep people “from buying and selling”. However, while the memorandum places significant obligations on the side of the OPW, it does not oblige insurers to provide flood cover. Importantly, the memorandum constitutes a formal commitment to aligning our flood adaptation governance with what matters to insurers: heavily-engineered flood relief infrastructure (a €1.3 billion budget for the 2021-2030 period), 1% AEP (Annual Exceedance Probability) flood events and, centrally, properties.

Works for the new river Poddle FAS were launched in April 2024. Most public debates about the flood scheme that preceded its formal approval were centered on insurance access. One of its central pieces is the upgrading of the Tymon Park flood ponds, those first created in 1997 and which proved ineffective in 2011. Most importantly, the scheme allows for the production of a map of “benefitting areas” under a 1% AEP flood event scenario, a key requirement of insurance companies. People owning property in these ‘protected’ areas will be able to (re)claim flood insurance and, if successful, will see the value of their property increase accordingly. Meanwhile, the focus on what matters to insurers dissociates even further the flood scheme from its initial objective, which was to address the death of Celia de Jesus: the basement in which she died is not part of the 1% AEP flood map and map of benefitting areas produced as part of the scheme. This is how a new maladaptation cycle is closing and setting the path for those to come.

The social murder and its implications

The flood management approach adopted in the river Poddle catchment between 1985 and 2024 signals ongoing maladaptation. Despite numerous failures and limitations, our dependency on flood engineering and flood insurance is ever increasing. Millions of public euros are injected in the building of 1% AEP event protective infrastructures in the hope that insurers will take them into account, but they have no obligation to do so. In turn, the approach continues to fuel the overdevelopment of flood-prone areas, which results in increased residual risk. While highly profitable to real estate market actors at large, it leaves tenants unprotected or even at increased risk exposure for those most precariously housed. The death of Celia de Jesus does not stem from heavy rainfall but is the result of such a flood adaptation approach. In this sense, it must be seen as a social murder.

The social murder lens has two main implications for flood adaptation intervention: first, as described at length, the killing of Celia de Jesus and its framing involve a wide range of public/private actors at all levels of society across large temporal/spatial scales. Therefore, finger-pointing individuals, institutions, regulations will not address the flood maladaptation that killed Celia de Jesus. What is required as a matter of urgency is to challenge the political economy driving our current approach to flood adaptation: the assumptions that make us believe that protecting markets is more important than protecting lives. There are inherent contradictions between the two endeavours that can never be reconciled.

The second main implication of social murder is that it extends far beyond the death of Celia de Jesus: it points toward a lack of basic flood protection for all ‘unpropertied’ of Ireland. Should future flood adaptation interventions fail to consider the death of Celia de Jesus as what it stands for, which is that wider systemic/structural flood inequities must be addressed as a matter of urgency, they will only contribute to fuelling ongoing flood maladaptation and its social murders.

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Offline sources

Report on the death of Celia de Jesus produced by the Dublin District Coroner in 2012.

“Tymon Park” published by South Dublin County Council in 2001.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank All who contributed to the research that gave rise to the present article, All who greatly helped improve the article to its current form and, finally, All who are working behind the scenes to make Rundale possible.

Forthcoming related public event

The research will be presented & discussed on 15 September 2024, 5pm to 7pm, at The Four Provinces, Kimmage, D12 X965. No need to register in advance, just turn up on the day, Everyone welcome!