[caption id="attachment_67613" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="So much for a roof. These cars are in a waterlogged underground parking lot in flood ravaged Dublin. "]
A month's worth of rainfall fell in Dublin on Monday causing the city's major emergency plan to be invoked and resulting in a young garda officer being swept away.
The fatal incident in County Wicklow. Garda Ciaran Jones (25), who was stationed at Stepaside in south County Dublin, was off duty at the time but had been helping people on the upper stretches of the River Liffey in the Wicklow mountains.
Jones, a member of the Wicklow Gaelic football squad, was attempting to keep people safe from dangerous floods at Ballysmuttan bridge when he was swept into the Liffey.
There had been fears the bridge was in danger of collapsing as people tried to cross.
On Tuesday, a body was recovered nearby and was identified as being that of the young garda.
Superintendent Eamon Keogh said Garda Jones, who had been a member of the police force for four years, was pulled into the river while trying to come to the aid of a motorist.
"He was seen for a few moments by friends and then he wasn't seen again," he said.
The officer, who lived nearby, is understood to have got out of his car at the bridge to help others at risk of being stranded.
The Irish Coast Guard, a Garda helicopter and mountain and river rescue teams all joined Garda colleagues in the resulting search.
The tragedy happened after large parts of the east of the country were hit by the deluge. In Dublin, the Dodder, Poddle and Camac rivers burst their banks and a major emergency was declared in the capital.
Another badly affected area in Dublin was suburb of Dundrum where floodwaters surging from the River Slang inundated the local shopping center and forced the evacuation of staff and customers.
