‘Like something you would see in a movie. We helped as best we could. It was very hard to know where to start’
A COFFEE shop manager has spoken of the terrifying moment she thought a bomb was going off when the explosion rocked the village of Creeslough.
Siobhán Carr runs The Coffee Pod on the Wild Atlantic Campsite, just 100 yards from the scene of the Applegreen service station where the explosion killed three children and seven adults on Friday afternoon.
Among the victims were Leona Harper, 14, who was buying ice cream at the time; Jessica Gallagher, 23, who had moved back from Paris, and Catherine O’Donnell, whose 13-year-old son James was also killed. The youngest victim was just five years old. Her father, aged in his 50s, was also killed.
As Ms Carr looks out her window she can see the debris and the gaping roof of the tumbled garage.
She described the moment she heard the blast which shook the village to its core. She said: ‘We were just winding down for the day. There were a few people in the shop with us and we just heard a bang. Everyone just ran to see what they could do to help.
‘Everyone just ran to see what happened. No one knew what had happened. People were just rushing around to see what they could do to help. The community here is so good and so close. I saw locals going in with bare hands to clear rubble. It was horrific just watching it unfold and hearing that people were trapped.’
The Coffee Pod and the Huckleberry coffee shop at the opposite end of the village have been providing free refreshments for workers since the horrific incident.
‘We’re just trying to give whatever comfort we can. Even if it is just coming in to sit down. ‘Throughout the night, people were coming in all the time. It is such a busy shop and it is such a busy area. We have people here at the campsite on a daily basis.
‘We got to a stage where we had to turn food away. People
have sent in stuff from other towns and villages. We have been inundated from people around the country.’ A local man who lives a kilometre from the centre of the explosion said he felt a ‘sonic boom’ from the explosion and was knocked off his chair.
Eamonn McFadden was at his home in Creeslough working at his laptop when the blast went off.
‘There was this huge bang and it was like a sonic boom. We were rocked to the very core. The house shook and the people in the house shook.
‘It was actually hard to describe what it felt like other than to call it a sonic boom. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before,’ he said.
Eamonn said he knew something ‘catastrophic’ had happened. He rushed to the scene and found utter carnage and devastation.
‘It was like something you would see in a movie. It was catastrophic. There was no emergency services at the scene at that stage so we helped as best we could. It was just very difficult to know where to start.’