Night of the fire from hell
Blaze that took ten lives is recalled by family members
FAMILY members frantically tried to save friends and relatives from a burning cabin in a halting site while the flames rose two storeys high, Dublin Coroner’s Court has heard.
The inquest into the deaths of five adults and five children in Carrickmines in October 2015 heard yesterday from those living onsite at the time of the blaze.
Ten victims perished in the fire, including Thomas Connors, 27, his wife Sylvia, 30, and their children Jim, five, Christy, three, and six-month-old Mary; Sylvia’s brother Willie Lynch, 25, and his partner Tara Gilbert, 27, who was pregnant, their daughters Jodie, aged nine, and Kelsey, age four, also died. The tenth victim was Jimmy Lynch, 39, another brother of Sylvia.
All had been visiting the Connors that night, and were staying in the same two-bedroom portacabin.
Jimmy Connors Jr was too upset to attend the court but in his deposition, which was read to the jury, he described how he had rushed to try to save the family from the fire.
Mr Connors said he had been drinking cans of beer with his brother Thomas and Sylvia and the other adults in their cabin earlier that evening, the children having gone to bed in the cabin at around 8pm.
He said Thomas had been smoking cannabis and everyone was drunk when he left. He said that it had been a good night with no arguments. He said he left at around 2am to go to bed in his own timber cabin, near the entrance to the site. ‘I was woken by my wife screaming at me, saying Thomas’s is on fire. I jumped out of bed. I saw flames in the kitchen of Thomas and Sylvia’s caravan,’ he said.
Mr Connors continued: ‘I went straight to the front door and kicked it in. I went in and got hit by the flames. I could feel myself burning and had to go back out. I broke the two windows on the right of the door. I was trying to let the smoke out. I ran to get a pallet and I put it at the window. I climbed up and reached into the bed I knew was there.
‘I couldn’t see anything because of the smoke. It was only smoke then. I couldn’t feel anybody on the bed. I kept feeling and grabbed a child by the clothes and reached backwards out of the window.’
He said he later knew that this child was Thomas’s baby, Mary, who was six months old.
Jim Connors Sr, Thomas’s father, said he woke at around 4am when he heard noises in the yard. He looked outside and saw the flames and smoke from Thomas and Sylvia’s home.
He said he saw his son Jimmy on the pallet, and told another son John Keith, then 14, to go in through a bedroom window of the burning cabin. ‘He handed me out Thomas [also known as Tom, his then four-year-old grandson, who survived]... I told John to come back out. I knew if he went back in he would not come out,’ he said.
He said he told John to run and get the fire extinguisher from the wall next to his own cabin. ‘He came back. He pressed the handle but it was broke. Nothing came out. The fire extinguisher was full... John rang the fire brigade,’ he said.
John Keith recalled climbing in through the window. He told the inquest he kept his eyes closed as he felt around in the smoke, and that he could feel his brother Thomas Connors, and his jeans and T-shirt, and
‘I went in and was hit by flames’
his sister-in-law Sylvia’s leggings. He said they were both on the floor, and he could not move either of them. ‘You couldn’t see a thing. It was just proper black smoke. I had to keep going back to the window to get my breath,’ he said.
He said he felt his nephew Tom, and was able to pass him out the window. He said he had to leave the cabin as it was burning so fast, and he had Tom in his arms as he rang the fire brigade. He said the boy was making choking noises.
He insisted that he had taken the pin out of the extinguisher before trying to use it. He also said he had tried to use a hose to quench the fire, but the water only came out in a dribble. He said the flames spread very fast, and that within 20 minutes the whole structure had burned. He said he did not hear any alarms going off.
Kathleen Connors McDonough, Thomas Connors’s sister, wept as she gave her evidence to the inquest. She said she lived on site with her husband John, and son, John, who was four at the time.
She said she had been watching a film in her cabin, and only knew about the fire when she heard John Keith screaming. ‘I saw smoke and flames,’ she said. ‘I did not hear any noises or bangs. I didn’t hear anything [from Thomas Connors’s home], no screams, nothing.’
She told how Jimmy Connors’s wife Katie handed her baby Mary, and how she ran with the baby back to her own caravan. She said she put her in the middle of her double bed, woke her young son and told him to mind the infant. But she told the inquest she had no idea if Mary was alive or dead at that time. She said there was a blanket around the child.
‘I didn’t ever really look at the child,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t remember Mary crying or anything when I was running with her.’
As she was returning to Thomas’s Portacabin, she said she looked back and saw flames coming out of her own chalet, and her son standing on the front steps, screaming: ‘Mary’s not okay, Mary’s not okay.’ ‘I didn’t know what the child meant,’ she said.
She said the firefighters arrived then and pushed her out of the way. ‘I said Mary’s in there, the baby’s in there,’ she wept.
She told the inquest she would not have had a clue how to operate a fire extinguisher.
Katie Connors said baby Mary had been breathing noisily when she gave her to Kathleen.
When she saw a firefighter later carry Mary in his arms out of Kathleen’s chalet, she said she knew the baby was dead. ‘My mind went blank. I don’t remember nothing after that,’ she said.
Taxi driver Christopher Cleary said he saw huge flames, two storeys high, after being flagged down by a man outside the halting site at around 4.30am.
He said the man, who was aged between 40 and 50 and wearing pyjama bottoms, said to him: ‘You have to stop and help me, there are people in the building.’
Mr Cleary said he drove a short distance further down the road and called 999. He said the fire service told him that help was already on the way and he saw fire engines arrive within a minute.
The inquest heard conflicting evidence about electrical work at the site in the days before the fire.
A number of relatives recalled electrical works inside Thomas Connors’s mobile home on October 9. ‘They had made a mistake and were due to come back the next day,’ Kathleen Connors McDonagh told the court.
However, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Council executive Tom McHugh said there was no evidence of contractors or caretakers visiting the site that week.
The inquest continues today.