It Occurs To Me:  Good, bad or indifferent?

The buck-eejitry of some people never ceases to amaze me. 

A few years ago on a slip-road near the motorway in County Kildare, an accident meant that traffic had slowed considerably, and I passed the time talking to an on-duty Garda. He pointed out with disgust at the number of vehicles who had pulled in or slowed up, and dozens of smart phones were being used to take photos or videos of the crash. “It’s unbelievable,” the guard said. “People will snap before they save.” 

That line stayed with me, as there have been many reports over the years of voyeurs being more concerned with social media than assisting possible injury victims.

Last week, the Glen of Imaal Mountain Rescue Team took to social media to slam drivers for travelling along impassable roads, stating: “While we're here to help, and we will help, people need to take some personal responsibility. This weather warning is well-advertised and is due to continue for a number of days. Taking your family on impassable roads, during a weather warning, in vehicles not suitable for the conditions is just idiotic. Please take the warnings seriously.”

It added that multiple mountain rescue units have helped over a dozen people “stuck in multiple vehicles on impassable roads in the Wicklow Mountains” on Sunday evening.

Many had travelled from Dublin to “see the snow”, despite warnings to stay at home. The mountain rescue team were under enough real pressure without having to rescue nosey parkers.

Dr Lasana Harris, an associate professor in experimental psychology at University College London, has researched the behaviour of people at emergency scenes. He has a theory on why people reach for their phones - it's not so much what goes through their minds, it's what doesn't. "We live in a culture where [photography on phones] is what people do; it's normative behaviour." Dr Harris thinks the recording of the dead or the injured is accordingly "mindless" - people pull out their phones automatically, for scenes "good, bad or indifferent".

                                        The Big Snow 

School closures last week reminded me that, in 1947, some schools were closed for weeks and months, and the aforementioned County Wicklow bore the brunt of the appalling weather. Residents of Rathdrum moved to call on the Irish Red Cross to fly food to them, because many had not been able to leave their homes for a month. 

Sheep in Donegal during wintry weather. During the Big Snow of 1947, thousands of sheep and hundreds of cattle perished. 

By the end of the first week of March, a plan was hatched to have an RAF jet drop food parcels to villages in Wicklow, such was the extent of the road blockage. By the time the plane arrived in Baldonnel, most of the areas had been reached and the plan was abandoned.

On March 8, about two weeks after the heaviest blizzard, the sky cleared and bus schedules were returning to normal. The streets of Dublin, it was reported, became severely slushy and icy. A frost endured and people remained snowed in as temperatures remained low. The Irish Times reported on an operation to rescue three sick, elderly siblings in from a cottage in Roundwood, Co Wicklow. James Doyle and his sisters had been stuck for weeks, with only potatoes for food. Thousands of sheep and hundreds of cattle perished. Weeks of scant feeding meant the animals that survived were often malnourished and sick.

                                       Welcome to Alaska!

Reading about the Big Snow of 1947 in the Indo last week, it put me in mind of my dad’s great story from back then. Although the bad snow lasted nearly three months earlier in the year, it was back with a vengeance in parts in November when he was travelling by train from The Phoenix Park Depot to Carrigans in Donegal, his first station. 

Because of the snow, the journey via Belfast and Derry took an extra few hours. By the time the 19-year old rookie landed at a lonely station at some unmerciful hour, the sergeant and his Alsatian dog had been waiting patiently but were both covered in snow. As dad recalled, his first introduction to Donegal was the sight of a man and his dog shaking themselves and snowflakes cascading onto the platform.

The Sergeant growled… “Galligan, I presume?” Dad laughed: “Begod Sergeant, for a minute there I thought I was in Alaska!”  The sergeant was unimpressed: “Well,Galligan, when you’re up here six months, you’ll bloody well know you’re in Alaska!”

                                         A white Inishowen

 In Passages of Inishowen, Pat Dorrian of Raphoe recalls: “I vaguely remember the ‘big snow’ of 1947. We had to walk to school with great difficulty but the snowball fights were great fun.” Rosaleen Tourish – mother of Altan’s Ciaran Tourish – remembers: “It wasn’t all sunshine then. We had some very harsh winters as well. I remember March 1947 in particular when we had a terrible snow blizzard. Our house was completely snowed over and a man who lived farther up the road from us had to stay in our house for a couple of nights as he couldn’t get through the deep snow drifts to go home. It was a great opportunity for sleighing though! The older family members could go for a couple of miles over treetops and everything else. The sun glistening on the frozen surface was like the most brilliant of diamonds spread out in an unending carpet. I have never seen snow last so long.”

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Margaret Bradley of Carndonagh recollects: “One of my earliest memories is that of the Big Snow in the spring of 1947. I don’t know how long it lasted but, as a small child, it seemed a long time. I can still see the postman struggling down the lane to our house walking on a wall of snow as high as the hedge. My father cleared paths out from our door to the turf house, byre and barn. He tended to the cattle and sheep while my brothers and I made sure there was a good supply of turf during the icy spell. The shopping that was always my mother’s task had now to be done by my father mainly for food and oil. We had endless fun sleighing and building snowmen. The countryside was a magical sight when the sun shone; the snow glistened like diamonds. Eventually the thaw came and with it a return to normality, including back to school.”

The late John ’Jock’ McLaughlin from Glentogher recalled: "One of the most extraordinary stories was to do with Pat McLaughlin, also from Glentogher. He was in hospital in Letterkenny and died. They tried to bring his body home but the hearse got stuck in Newtowncunningham.

"Then they brought him as far as Quigley’s Point in one of Jimmy Breslin’s lorries. But then the lorry got stuck too. So, they ended up bringing him the rest of the way by horse and sleigh - the snow was that atrocious that night. "I had helped to dig that man’s grave earlier that day. Despite all the snow that fell and was lying all around, there wasn’t one bit of snow on or in the grave. "Pat’s nephew, Owenie, who lived in Kinnaglug, arrived at the church the next morning for the funeral. Fr Bonner asked him how he’d managed to get there and he said he’d walked. He’d had a bit of bother though, as he’d put his foot into Hamilton’s chimney on the way!"

"The snow was everywhere, and deeper than I’ve ever seen. Across the road out there, it was right over the fence. And, in some places, where the wind blew it into drifts, it was as high as 30 feet. It was terrible hard to keep a fire lit through it. We had an open hearth and the sitting room opened right into the hall, so we had to keep a window open for the draught. It was freezing the whole time. The icicles were about a foot long. I’ve hardly even seen an icicle since!"

"People didn’t store up turf for the winter then. You went up to the bog to get what you needed for a wee while and then went back again. But there was no getting up to the bog during that. Thousands of sheep died up on the bog at the time. No one could get to them. I remember cutting away at the hawthorn outside the house, and using it to keep the fire going. You had to dig through the snow to get water from the spring. It’s strange but the spring didn’t freeze up, probably because the water was moving. You had to bring grub to the cattle and the chickens. You couldn’t let them out. Even if you did, there wouldn’t have been anything for them to eat.

And, of course you had to walk everywhere. There were no tractors and hardly anyone even had a bicycle. It was hardest on the people living away up on the sides of the mountain. They couldn’t get in or out for days."