Hope you can Help Us to Help Them.
We have had quite a number of named storms throughout Ireland lately and each time the forecasters warned us of doom and gloom it never seemed to be as bad as they predicted. The warning for Éowyn seemed different and forecasters seemed to be more concerned on this one so we at World of Owls took it seriously.
We started by prepping each weakness we had and we boxed up all our most vulnerable birds in their large travel boxes and brought them indoors.
Storm Éowyn hit Ireland coasts around midnight of January 24th 2025. The highest ever winds recorded for Ireland caused havoc and left a trail of destruction lasting for 3 days as it moved along the Irish coasts continued through us in Northern Ireland and headed off to Scotland and Norway.
At first light on Saturday 25th and still in the midst of the storm we went to check our animals and our premises. On the journey there and listening to the news and what we witnessed on route, and the radio filled us with dread. Friends were calling with all sorts of horrific news reports of devastation, our local hotel lost its entire roof.
We had to chainsaw and tow trees out of our approach lane in the forest to clear a path and at one stage cut through a farmers field to get to our centre.
We arrived at the gates to find they were still standing but the fence surrounding it were not in fact quite a lot of the perimeter fence had broken posts and missing panels.
We had parts of our roofs missing and a lot of branch, leaf, twig and downed tree limbs. Some broken branches are still a little precarious and we will need to hire a tree surgeon (which we wont get for quite some time as they are all on other jobs). Three of our aviaries have been destroyed beyond repair and one was in a heap completely obliterated.
As we walked around our centre we were shocked to come to our American Red Tail aviary to find the rear and side panels missing and “Beau” our Red Tail still sitting inside, pretty frightened. I dropped the camera and sprung into action to secure him (from here on in no more photos of the sever damage), I was too busy rescuing what we had left as the storm was still raging.
This has caused us some expensive damage of which we will struggle to fix without help. We would really appreciate any assistance no matter how little can you donate a little (or a lot) to help us carry on our work saving these magnificent creatures.
All our 2025 budget for repairs went on the previous “Storm Darragh” and its not even the end of January! Please please help us, it would really make a difference.
