Residents in the Co Fermanagh village of Boho are calling for action after facing years of flooding issues in the area which cause major disruption.
Heavy rainfall caused by Storm Barra in the county earlier this month saw a recurrence of the flooding issue, leaving roads impassable and some residents having to wade through waterlogged fields to get to their homes.
In some of the worst affected areas of Boho, people can often be left in their homes for days on end, while one road was closed for an entire month last year due to heavy rainfall.
A petition has now been launched by local MLA Jemma Dolan to call on statutory bodies to work together in order to provide a solution to the persistent flooding issue.
Charlene Maguire, a single parent who works as a carer and often does night shifts, said she has often has to cross fields with water up to her knees to get to and from work or school.
“I work as a carer during the night so for me to go out late at night and try to get back over again in the morning, and taking the children out to school is such a task,” Charlene told MyFermanagh.
“This has been going on now for years, and as a child growing up myself it was just the norm.
“With my son growing up I have had to carry him across the field on my back with my daughter there going through it as well.
“Every year it seems to just rise that wee bit higher and deeper, and we have to get bigger and bigger wellies, but it’s definitely dangerous.
“Cars definitely can't come in, I have a jeep even myself and it just gets to the point where it’s not safe to drive a car through it.
“We just feel very isolated from everyone because if you did need to get your child to hospital when it’s like that, you couldn’t imagine doing that in the middle of the night out over fields.”
Local businessman Dessie McKenzie said those in the local community are getting tired of the issue continuing to impact their lives.
“It uproots everyone’s lives really, it totally disrupts everything and in certain circumstances it is very dangerous,” the Linnet Inn owner said.
“People are having to change their whole approach to their day, they are having to leave their cars a mile away from their house and walking across waterlogged fields in wellies using torches just to get home.
“There are children in the area, elderly people and it’s frightening for them as well as tiresome.
“It’s not something that happens every 100 or 50 years, it’s maybe three times a year we are facing this.”
In her petition, Sinn Féin MLA Dolan said the rurality of the area was one of the reasons why a solution has not been found.
“If any urban area in the north was consistently suffering the floods they are, I believe that funding would have already been allocated to alleviate the problem,” the petition says.
“Roads Service, Rivers Agency and Fermanagh and Omagh Council work well to help Boho community during times of flooding.
“Unfortunately government departments have time and again said that the large amounts of money to lessen the impacts of the regular flooding is not value for money.
“They are wrong, and just because this effects a small population, this is unfair in the extreme.”
