2 TribuneReview
06/07/08
DAVID KENNY’S ERINDIPITY
Best place to get
hit by a tsunami
LAST week saw the release of the
latest Central Statistics Figures
outlining how we live today, ie if you
live in Dublin you’re more likely to be
ripped off than, say, Leitrim where
you’re more likely to die of boredom,
etc.
The CSO says the average prices of
79 items surveyed were 4.9% higher
in Dublin. Of these, booze in pubs is
10% dearer, while orange juice is
18.6% more expensive and back
rashers cost 22.3% more.
This means Dublin is the worst
place in the country to go on the
batter: first you’re fleeced in the pub
and then you’re ripped off trying to
cure yourself with a greasy breakfast.
Still there’s always a silver lining: a
gent’s blowdry is almost 45% dearer
in Dublin, which means Michael
Flatley won’t be moving to the capital
anytime soon.
These figures came as a backdrop
to the talk of recession and our falling
out of favour with Europe over the
Lisbon treaty.
But cheer up, things could be
worse: it’s not like there’s a tsunami
heading this way. Actually, there is.
With this in mind, we present a
short collection of trivia concerning
the best and worst places to live with
regards to getting poisoned,
drowned, caught in an earthquake or
a nuclear disaster.
Best place to wipe out
Northern Ireland
Silent Valley, Co Down. In 1924,
nervous Unionists got the Boundary
Commission to shift the entire
Mourne Mountain range north of the
border because of security fears.
Earlier that year, the people of
Newry, in the heart of Mourne
country, wrote to the commission
requesting it be included in the south.
But the town – which was 75%
nationalist – was refused as the area
is home to the north’s biggest
reservoir, Silent Valley. The Unionist
population argued that if it was left in
the hands of the Free Staters, they
would poison it in an attempt to kill
them all.
Incredibly, the commission bought
it.
It also believed the Unionist line
about Beleek in Fermanagh posing
another watery threat. The
predominantly nationalist townfolk
there were shocked to wake up one
morning on the ‘wrong side’ on the
basis that if Fermanagh went south
the IRA would use its lakes to flood
the county and drown all the
Unionists.
Apparently there was a brisk sale
in arks that year.
Best place to survive a
nuclear disaster
Ballydehob, Co Cork? In 1977, a
German magazine ran an article
claiming Ballydehob’s coordinates –
51 33 45 N and 9 28 38 W – rendered it
immune to nuclear fallout-carrying
winds. Shortly afterwards, hordes of
bomb-fearing hippies began
descending on the place.
A year later, their safe haven got a
bit of a jolt when the government
announced it was going to build a
nuclear power plant a county away in
Wexford.
Deploying their deadliest weapon
(the power of song), the lentil
munchers joined up with Chrises
Moore and de Burgh and organised
two protest concerts at Carnsore
Point in 1978 and 1979.
The shows were a massive success
and the nuclear plans were shelved.
In fact, the hippies did such a good
job that Carnsore Point ultimately
became the site of our first – safe –
wind-generating station.
In 2000, singer Robbie Williams
announced he was about to make his
movie debut – as a hippie called
Dylan in a comedy called Far From the
Mushroom Cloud. It was set in
Ballydehob: Ballydehob in 1978 and was about
nuclear proof immigrant hippies uniting with the
locals to oppose a new nuclear power
station.
Williams’ career (and the movie),
unlike west Cork, has since gone up in
smoke.
Best place to survive an
earthquake
Anywhere other than Dublin or
Wicklow. Reports of tidal waves and
earthquakes hitting our east coast
date back to October 720AD (in the
Annals of Wales). These quakes
emanated from the Menai Straits
fault zone which runs across the Irish
Sea, passing south of Carnsore Point.
The last big quake in this zone
happened on 19 July 1984 and
measured 5.4 on the Richter scale. It
David Kenny is shook houses along Ireland’s east
author of ‘Erindipity’ coast, making our dad think we’d
and ‘Erindipity Rides fallen out of bed (again). Two other
Again’. Any ideas or recent quakes have occurred in the
queries are same area, in 1994 (magnitude 2.9)
always welcomed and 1999 (magnitude 3.2).
More recently, an earthquake
dkenny@tribune.ie measuring 2.8 was recorded in the
www.davekenny.com Irish Sea off Bray Head in December,
2005.
Sunday Tribune
Here’s the bad news: it’s highly
unlikely, but possible, that the east
could be hit by a tidal wave again,
triggered by a quake in the Irish Sea.
However, the folk there have less to
fear in this respect than the people of
Munster…
Best place to get hit by
a tsunami
We’re all doomed. DOOMED, I
TELLS YOU!!!
St Columcille prophesied the
following back in the sixth century:
“This new Éire shall be Éire the
Prosperous; great shall be her
renown and her power, and there
shall not be on the surface of the wide
earth a country found to be equal to
this fine country... Seven years before
the last day, the sea shall submerge
Éire by one inundation.”
New Éire? Sound familiar?
In 2006 our politicians announced
that they were considering signing up
to an early warning system for
detecting tsunamis that could
potentially flood the country.
It’s not a bad idea.
The Canary island of La Palma is
sitting on top of a super volcano.
When this eventually blows, it will
cause a tidal wave 330 feet high to
race at 500mph across the ocean and
flatten Florida after inundating our
south coast.
The part of the wave that will hit us
will be smaller, but bigger than
anything we’ve ever experienced and
will penetrate at least a mile inland.
And it could happen at any time.
Cumbre Vieja volcano is active
enough to erupt at least twice a
century. The last major event was in
1949.
Therefore the best place to get hit
by a tsunami is... Co Cork, specifically
in Kinsale.
Why Kinsale? Because it’s
happened there before.
In 1755 Sir Charles Lyell added this
to an account of the worst quake ever
recorded in European history (at
magnitude nine): “A great wave swept
over the coast of Spain, and is said to
have been 60 feet at Cadiz... at
Kinsale a body of water rushed into
the harbour, whirled round several
vessels, and poured into the
marketplace.” The wave continued
around the coast and damaged the
Spanish Arch in Galway, before it
receded.
Seeing as how we started off
talking about recession, this seems an
appropriate place to wind up this
doom-fest.
It might interest you to know
where the tidal wave that swamped
our coast emanated from. It was
Lisbon.
Couldn’t we just tell them the No
vote was payback?