Traffic chaos fears follow floods

A car stuck in floods on the city's Westlink

Traffic chaos is predicted for Monday after the Fire Service warned it could take 24 hours to clear flood water from a main commuter route into Belfast.

At 1300 BST the Broadway underpass on the Westlink was under 20m gallons of water.

Andrew Murray from the Roads Service said the underpass would probably not be open on Monday and contingency plans were being put in place.

At least five cars are thought to be under the floods.

Motorists were forced to abandon them as the water rose.

Mr Murray said: "The water is being pumped out as fast as we can get it pumped out.

"But unfortunately it looks as though the underpass will not be open tomorrow morning and we are currently doing contingency planning for that."

He said a pumping station was in place which should have been able to cope with the flow.

However, the Clowney river overflowed into the site and the reason for that is under investigation.

On Sunday, the fire service said they were managing to reduce the water level by about six inches every hour.

But a spokesman warned that it could take 24 hours to get the water out of the underpass and that was not allowing for more rain.

He said the service was pumping 7,000 litres of water per minute from the road.

'4,000 calls'

A spokesperson for Northern Ireland Water said it had dealt with more than 4,000 calls over the last two days.

He said the team had been working day and night and was liaising closely with other agencies.

"We are liaising with the Met Office in relation to possible heavy rainfall in coming days and we are taking all reasonable precautions to protect continuity of our service."

Sinn Fein Upper Bann Assembly member John O'Dowd said the authorities were unable to cope with the conditions

"We were on the ground from about four o'clock in one area in Lurgan, which actually flooded last Tuesday," he said.

"We couldn't get sandbags, we couldn't get anybody from Water Service, Rivers Agency, to take any action.

"They were overwhelmed themselves and there didn't appear to be any coordination at all."