‘It was like an atomic bomb, I was looking for the plume’
AS HOPES of finding any survivors faded yesterday, one woman had the task of helping her distraught friend identify their child in the rubble.
‘It was like an atomic bomb going off,’ she told the Irish Mail on Sunday in the eerie and surreal aftermath of the devastating blast in Creeslough.
‘I was looking for the plume rising [from the explosion]. There was complete silence, you couldn’t even hear the birds.’
In an indication of how the tragedy that has claimed the lives of 10 people will forever change the small local community, the woman said: ‘We all know each other around here, warts and all.’
Creeslough is a small farming village with a population of around 400, some 15 kilometres from Letterkenny, and 30 kilometres from the border.
Locals who spoke to the MoS yesterday described it as ‘the smallest of hamlets’ where most people are interconnected.
One said: ‘It’s like a thousand small villages on a crossroads from Offaly to Mayo to Donegal. It has a filling station, a GAA team, St Michael’s and two bars, McNulty’s and Rose’s.
It’s the sort of place where five sets of brothers make up the GAA team.’
One resident said of the level of care within the community: ‘Whenever I’m carrying something heavy a young man always jumps out of nowhere and helps me with my shopping. Everyone is always so kind. People say it’s a holiday town, but it’s not really. There are a few holiday homes, but it’s mostly residents who all know each other.’
Parish priest Fr John Joe
Duffy summed up the utter devastation his parishioners are struggling to cope with the sheer scale of the tragedy
He told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland: ‘It’s beyond anything that we thought we could experience in this community.
‘It’s like watching a fictional movie unfold before our eyes. Some parents have been standing here through the night waiting for news of loved ones that are unaccounted for. It’s a wonderful community but at this moment its heart is broken.’
The Applegreen garage destroyed in the explosion was described as the ‘focal point for the much wider rural community’ where ‘everybody knew everyone who worked there’.
One resident said it was, ‘the mecca for the three primary schools down the road, the kids would race up there after school and get their sweets.
‘A friend of mine was on her way to the post office and got distracted and by the time she got there, the explosion had just happened.
‘Another friend was there 10 minutes before but decided not to fill up with petrol like she normally would and just went home. You know, it could have been anyone.’
The N56 cuts through the village and commuters travel daily through it on their way to Derry or Letterkenny.
Local farmers who live in Creeslough also commute along the N56 to second jobs in neighbouring towns such as Letterkenny.
Many residents are employed at Letterkenny University Hospital, where those injured in the explosion were taken for treatment.
Summing up the closeness of the community, local Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty said: ‘This is a community that will be forever changed. There won’t be anyone in this village or further afield who won’t know somebody who was deceased in this explosion.
‘It’s the heart of the community and that such an explosion could rip through the building but more so rip through the lives of so many people in this community and change those lives forever.’
Liam McElhinney, chairman of St Michael’s GAA club who visited the shop only an hour before the blast, said: ‘I was in shock when the news came through. I myself had just left the shop at half two so it just shows you could be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘Some of the people that have died are known personally by myself and it’s very hard to watch.
‘It could have been any of us... it’s a massive thing to happen in our community and it’ll take a long time to get over it.’