TWO women were taken to St James's Hospital in Dublin suffering from severe burns when a wedding reception turned to horror in a South Dublin Hotel.
Ms Anne Dowling and Ms Pauline Hennessy, both waitresses at the Killiney Court Hotel, were last night described as critical after they caught fire in an accident on Thursday evening.
The fire is understood to have started in the kitchen of the hotel where the staff attempted to put a flame to a baked alaska.
A wedding guest described how a bang was heard coming from the kitchen: "The girls came tumbling out through the door on fire, nobody knew what to do.
"They were screaming, one of the girls had her feet burned and her hair was singed the other was lying on the ground, her shirt was completely gone."
Bride and groom Rachel Byrne and John Prenter, from Bray, Co Wicklow, were horrified by the incident.
"Someone grabbed a tablecloth and wrapped it round one of the women. I was crying, I just couldn't believe it had happened." Ms Byrne said.
Another family member described how guests doused the women with water and how a nurse among the party attempted to administer aid.
It was frightening, I saw them being taken away in two ambulances. One of the women was almost entirely bandaged up," she said.
A spokesman for the hotel declined to comment on the incident yesterday evening.