Storm Debi leaves couple homeless

APPEAL Community rallies around young wheelchair user

A young Cavan woman, battling a spinal condition, has been left homeless this week after Storm Debi ripped the roof of her mobile home.

Wheelchair user Kim Hannigan and her partner Stuart were living in the mobile in the Tunnyduff area while they renovate a house on the site. Luckily they had just left the mobile home to take shelter for themselves and their pets in the main house, which has no services, when mother nature let rip. “The roof just peeled off, like the top of a sardine can,” said a shocked Kim.

“Currently it’s lodged up in the trees in the orchard,” she added.

It was the fear of a tree falling on the mobile home that prompted Kim to wake her partner and relocate to the main house.

Ironically, none of the trees were felled by the storm.

“He was happy to go back to sleep,” she laughed of her partner. Kim admits feeling “freaked” when she woke around 6am on Monday morning to the howling winds outside.

“It was actually lifting the edges of the mobile home. It was too much. We needed to go in.”

Aside from a bed they moved into the main house from the mobile home, the couple are currently struggling without many household essentials.

“We have no electric, no plumbing, no water, no heat…” listed off Kim. There is quite a bit of work to do to make the house habitable.

“Neighbours have been fantastic,” said Kim, adding that some offered to put them up, as has her mother, Sandra Hannigan from Stradone. However, the couple are reluctant to impose on anybody or to leave their much-loved pets – dogs and rabbits – behind.

Treatment

Asked if they had contacted the local authority to request emergency housing, Kim revealed: “I have only been able to think about this brain scan.”

The young woman was dashing off for an MRI appointment at Cavan General Hospital. She revealed that a bad reaction to a course of antibiotics in January of this year had left her using a wheelchair. Kim experienced “swelling in my brain and spine” and developed a cerebral spinal fluid leak.

She is currently going through tests and treatment in an effort to reverse it and regain her mobility.

The community is rallying around the young couple to assist them – including to secure a tarpaulin on the roof of the mobile home. Kim says neighbours have been most generous, offering food and showering facilities.

A GoFundMe campaign has been launched to help the couple to make their house liveable. You can contribute to it here.