An experienced firefighter has told how nothing couldn't have prepared him for the shock that hit him when he saw the aftermath of the Creeslough tragedy.
Joe Ó Frighil was with the first fire brigade which arrived at the scene of the blast at the Applegreen Service Station last Friday.
Although Joe, who is stationed in Falcarragh in West Donegal had an understanding of what had happened, he said that he wasn’t prepared for how bad things were when himself and the other five firemen reached the site of the accident.
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“When we came around the corner we could see all the debris out on the road... People walking around, people cut, people falling. I took out the phone and I called for support. I told them we needed a lot of support that there was chaos here.”
“The local community were all trying to help, but there was nothing safe at all about what they were doing. The gable of the building was ready to fall in, the solar panels were dangling by a tiny cord ... like something you would see on the TV. Despite all the training, nothing can prepare you for something like that.”
Joe said that Brian Ó Fearraigh, the Regional Advanced Paramedic Supervisor, was co-ordinating operations when they got there and he gave them direction as to where to focus first.
“We needed to pull people back. There were too many of them in there. Everyone wanted to help. They wanted to do what they could but it was too-dangerous. People weren’t too happy to pull back but we had to ask them to do it as it wasn’t safe.”
Joe said he understood completely for them, and how difficult it was.
“You have to put yourself in their shoes. Maybe they had relatives, family, in there and they were trying to get to them but it was just not safe.”
The emergency services then managed to the get the CCTV footage from the shop, which helped them to understand how many were in the shop at the time of the explosion and where they were located.
They also got support from emergency services in the North, which included an Urban Search and Rescue team who had dogs that were trained to locate people under the rubble, both the injured and those who had died. They had to request complete silence when the dogs were sent in.
“The dogs were a great resource to help us find out where the people were... it was better to send the dogs in to try to locate them than for us to go in and with the danger that of something falling on you, because I can’t explain how dangerous a situation it was.”
“It was eerie, the quiet. It was so difficult for the relatives across the road who were crying and we had to ask them to try to be quiet so the dogs could do their work. There were hundreds of people there who wanted to help and they couldn’t help," he told Radio na Gaetltachta.
Joe praised the local contractors who came to their aid with equipment to help move the rubble in a safe way from the areas where they thought the people were located, a slow and painstaking job.
They had one moment of hope several hours into the rescue when a woman was pulled out alive from the building.
“There were men out the front and out the back trying to get in to people and talking to those who were still inside that we couldn’t reach ... And maybe after four hours we found a woman and she was able to walk out. It was incredible. We cut a hole in the wall and got her out through the hole.”
Joe spoke in the interview of the great co-operation between all the emergency services, and how each person had done their utmost to help. He also said that his uncle was well, although he was still shaken by the event.
He also revealed how his uncle Seán Ó Frighil, 83, from Gaoth Dobhair originally, was in his car in the forecourt of the station when the explosion happened and that was how Joe, got the story.
“Seán was on his way back from Letterkenny and he stopped into the shop to get ice-cream. He was just sitting outside the shop after getting into the car when the windscreen came in and the windows. He just sat for a while, he was shocked.
"He couldn’t see anything with the dust and soot... and then the first call he made was to my wife and she rang me and I turned the car and headed for the station. Then the pager went off.”
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