CHANDRA-MONIUM

Baby & parents 'trapped' in house are taken to safety | Chaos grips the country amid calls for prevention plan.

- MICHAEL O'TOOLE and CIARA O'LOUGHLIN

A BABY boy was rescued from his home at the height of the Storm Chandra flooding nightmare yesterday - and slept through the whole thing.

Volunteers from Slaney Search and Rescue brought three-week-old Ollie Micheal Kirwan, his parents and grandmother to safety on a boat in the middle of Enniscorthy, Co Wexford.

Ollie Micheal's mother Kasey Grant told The Star last night: "It's any parent's worst nightmare" as she, her partner Stephen and her little baby recovered from their ordeal.

Kasey was speaking to us fewer than 12 hours after she, her partner, their son and his grandmother Elayne Grant were brought to safety by Slaney Search and Rescue.

The team got to the couple's apartment and brought them to safety on a boat at 9am yesterday. The road they live on was flooded when the River Slaney burst its banks in the early hours.

Their apartment was on the first floor of a complex in the Quay area, but the waters had already submerged the first floor and there were real fears it would reach the electric box.

Elayne told RTE Drive Time she went to help her daughter Kasey when her newborn son became upset.

Mrs Grant said: "We were all settled, and we got a phone call from the Guards at half past one to remove my car from outside the building. I parked it a good bit away, came back, and we settled down. And the baby woke at about half four, five o'clock for a bottle.

"I looked out the window and we were absolutely, completely trapped in, we didn't even know that it was going to happen.

WORRY

"We were on the first level. The water was coming in at the ground floor door. We were at the first level, but it was coming up where all the electrics and everything were as you come in, the ground floor is the first apartment there.