“To be honest, I can​​’t sleep when it rains” - north Louth residents still fearful one year after Halloween floods

"To be honest, I can't sleep when it rains," says Carmel Farrell, whose home was badly damaged when torrents of water and mud flowed down the mountain into the peaceful estate.

She says that the footage of the recent floods in Spain have brought it all back to her, but she is thankful that their were no lives lost in the Halloween floods that hit the Cooley peninsula.

"Oh my God, my heart goes out to the people in Spain. We're thankful we didn't have that tragedy."

"At least nobody died. What we lost we could replace but it was still terrifying. We could replace the furniture and stuff that we lost but you can't replace lives."

The family have just bought floodgates to place in the doorways of their home in the home of protecting it in the event of further floods.

"We had flood insurance but they won't cover us again. It's a nightmare worrying if it will happen again. We own the house so we had to do all the work ourselves. The Council wouldn't even give us dehumidifiers to dry out the house although they did provide skips for people clearing out stuff that was damaged."

She is not aware of any works being carried out by Louth County Council to prevent a re-occurrence of the flooding.

"We see them patching up roads but we haven't seen anything being done up the mountains to stop this from happening again."

Anne Skerritt, who also lives in Trinity Close, says she lies awake all night when there's heavy rain.

"I live in fear," she says. "I used to love lying in bed listening to the rain but it changes how you feel about the weather."

She says she is still straightening out the house. "I've got the bulk of the work done, although the insurance didn't cover everything."

"I am doing everything I can to stop the house from being flooded again. I did purchase flood barriers and have a list of things to move if it starts to flood again."

Her car was written off in last year's flood and she is worried that this could happen again as there's a dip outside her driveway.

Ms Skerritt is scathing of the Council's response to the flooding.

"I'm not happy with the Council at all – their response was non-existent."

"The only thing that has been done is that the drains have been cleaned. That is grand for normal rainfall but they have done nothing to stop the river running down the mountain. It's the sustained rain that's the problem. We're living here 25 years and the water has only come into the estate twice, and that's in the last three years since the trees behind us were cut."

She says that she's constantly checking the weather forecast and is afraid to leave her house if there's heavy rain forecast.

"I've got two cats and I would be afraid of something happening to them if I wasn't here."

She would love for a warning system to be installed to give people notice that the water was rising.

Dozens of homes across the Cooley peninsula were damaged by floodwater last Halloween as rivers and streams burst their banks.

Artist Petra Berntsson lives at Rathcor and her home was one of five flooded when "a little tiny stream turned into a roaring brown river."

Petra and her two teenage children hadn't gone to bed on the night of flood as they had feared the worst.

"The field behind us had been flooded for two weeks as the ground was saturated. As it kept raining, the water kept coming closer to the house. We knew it was going to happen although we hoped it wouldn't. We had sandbags at the door but the water came in through the walls. We knew there was no way of stopping it and we were frantically mopping. We had already lifted up personal things like photographs and favourite books but once the water came in there was no way of stopping it.

At 5am, they realised they were losing the battle, switched off the electricity and climbed over their neighbours fence.

"The water didn't come in too high, the highest point was about 20cm but it was enough to ruin a lot of things."

They had to move out of the house and rented a place in town for nine months.

"We have moved back it despite it not being quite finished as I'm doing a lot of the work myself and I need to be here for that."

Their house is a cottage built in 1912 and extended in 2006.

"Nothing like this had happened to my house in its entire history although houses closer to the stream had been flooded but the water had never come as far as my house."

She says she was fortunate to have flood insurance but won't get cover again as the area is now black listed for flooding.

"The insurance company stipulated that the house be professionally cleaned as it had been flooded with 'black water' which was highly contaminated and dangerous so I was glad that was done even though it was costly."

Having moved back in, she is looking at ways to mitigate the risk of flooding in future and is planning to have a trench dug in the field behind her house to divert the flow of water in the event of heavy rains in future.

"The Council did replace the drainage pipes and we hope that the 2ft size will be enough to cope with the volume of water."

Nonetheless, she says that she has got up in the middle of the night to check that everything was okay on a couple of occasions when there was heavy rain.

Ms Berntsson fears that flooding events such as that of last Halloween are set to become more frequent due to climate change.

"I think we, as citizens, need to be more aware and engaged on the extensive climate change process and do what we can on the personal level, never mind putting pressure on our leaders. These events will continue to happen, they are predicted to continue to happen."