Lumpers in north Louth badly hit by last week's floods

“Massive boulders, four foot high, four foot wide, were taken down the mountain and are just sitting in gardens. It was like an absolute tsunami would be the only way to describe it.”

John Rafferty, barman at Lumpers Bar at Ballymakellet in Ravensdale, describing the devastation caused by last week's flooding, said that the water and debris coming down the mountain “was an absolute freefall, the river burst its banks, it could have went out an extra ten feet the banks of the river on the mountain”.

The bar was badly hit by the flooding and staff have been working night and day since on the clean up. Speaking to the Dundalk Democrat last week, Mr Rafferty explained that, “it got everywhere. It came in through three different doors - the front, the back, and we've a little side door.

“It got into our keg room, it got into our store room. It was up maybe about six or seven inches. We've been tearing apart all the panelling and skirting board, there's a lot of work that's going to have to be done.

“We've to tear out in behind the bar, all the shelving. There was fridges destroyed, glass washers got destroyed. It's fairly severe the damage.”

While it might have been expected that a bar so high up might not have been as impacted as it was, John explained that, “just where the pub is situated, on like a little flat part of the mountain, we got everything from the mountain, it all got landed on our front door.”

The clean up was well underway when John spoke to the Democrat on Friday. “We literally just got the car park area and the front bit of the bar going out onto the road, we just got that properly finished. We cleaned all the muck and gravel away this morning.

“We've had locals coming down to give us a hand, the past three nights, to get rid of the muck and the slush and the gravel that just came down the mountain.”

One shining light throughout the ordeal John is thankful for, is the support of locals. “The locals are very much behind us. We sent out an appeal for petrol, power washers and cardboard boxes yesterday, and the support that we have received from the local community is overwhelming.

“We've umpteen boxes got delivered because, obviously we've to clear out the bar so – no I had no boxes to put my glasses and my stock into, so we'd to use all the cardboard boxes for that, and we'd to transfer it out to the storage area, so that we can actually tear out the bar.”

When the bar might reopen to the public was still an unknown. “We're guesstimating it could be ten days to two weeks.

“It could be longer, hopefully its sooner, but we really don't know. We're afraid to estimate anything to the public. We really don't know. You're pretty much talking about a complete revamp of the downstairs area.”

While the clean up was ongoing, with its associated costs, and no income coming in, the bar could be facing tough times.

John explains, “we're not taking in anything and we're pretty much all hands on deck from half eight in the morning until half nine – ten o'clock at night. We're afraid to even estimate how much this is going to cost.”